Dark Ezri: The Series
by Tiberius
Summary: The continuing adventures of Ezri Tigan in the Mirror Universe, starting from her days as a merc with the Terran Rebels, six months after the end of DS9. Chapter XXII is now up!
1. Chapter I

Author's Note: This story begins six months after the final episode of DS9...

**DARK EZRI**

** Chapter I - Symbiosis**

_Deep inside the Mirror Universe..._

The Klingon cruiser _Bok'ra_ dropped out of warp and slipped into orbit around the planet Iotia. Almost immediately shuttles departed and transporters came online, bearing supplies for the Alliance world. Conquered more then a hundred years ago by the former Emperor Tiberius himself, the quick to adapt human-like population had emulated it's masters and became a valued part of the Terran Empire.

Now they were an integral part of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance that controlled the Alpha Quadrant, despite being quite far from the galactic hub. Here were based a massive mining and industrial operation that covered half the globe. But more importantly, at least for the stowaway onboard the _Bok'ra_, was Iotia's high-level detention center, isolated on an island in the western hemisphere.

Ezri Tigan, unjoined Trill mercenary, exited the cargo container that had been her home for the past week and a half, and stole through the darkened cargo hold, until she reached the nearest cargo transporter. It's Klingon operator was absorbed in her task, and Ezri didn't have to wait long.

The Officer finished transporting her allotment of cargo, then shut down the pad and headed for the lift, eager to be off shift. Ezri watched her disappear, envious at the possible fresh meal the Klingon could soon be enjoying. She herself had been surviving off of Breen nutrient packs for ten days, and some _qagh_ would be wonderful.

But to the mission at hand. Ezri quickly powered up the cargo transporter and scanned the planet, finding her target right away. She had committed it's layout to memory and knew just where to go. She programmed the pad on a ten second delay, then slipped a device of her own design from her jacket and attached under the panel.

She thumbed it on and stepped onto the transporter.

_If it works the way it should, I will be able to have it transport me back up whenever I need it_, she thought to herself, and then crossed her fingers, a human habit she had picked up.

"I'm coming Dax." Ezri whispered to the galaxy at large, as the countdown ended, and she vanished in the swirl of the transporter beam...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

_Two weeks ago, on the Rebel space station_ Terok Nor_..._

Ezri had had just about enough of the arrogant rebels, especially the constantly prattling Bajoran, Commander Leeta. Sure, they had captured Worf, the Regent of the Alliance himself and the flagship of the Alliance, the _Regency I_, six months earlier, a great triumph to be sure. But most of the Terrans thought that this was the turning point in the uprising, and now there was a massive mobilization taking place.

Hundreds of ships were already here in orbit around Bajor and the station, all "liberated" from the Alliance. Now there was a push to invade the Cardassian Empire itself, maybe try to take the spoonhead's homeworld. _Ludicrous_, Tigan thought, but she kept that to herself.

Ezri had gained a grudging respect for the rebel leader, O'Brien, maybe he could pull off the victory, but she would have no part in it. Ezri was a mercenary, and had no wish to sacrifice herself for a cause she didn't even believe in. Profit was her first and last motive, always had been. At least until she entered Morn's, the station's bar, that night. The night that had changed her life forever.

Captain Bashir, an unappealing human, at least Ezri thought so, though the rest of the female population seemed to disagree with her, was slumped over the bar again. As she sat down, she heard him going on again to a captivated Bajoran serving girl about Jadzia Dax, his former woman, who had been lost in a battle with Alliance forces, seven months earlier.

This was a constant thing with Bashir; get drunk on bloodwine and then dump on whoever was closest. Ezri was sick of it, despite the curiosity she had concerning the deceased fellow Trill. Bashir soon stumbled out, the girl in one hand, a bottle in the other, and Ezri watched them go as she nursed her own bitter ale. She shivered at the thought of their upcoming carnal practices, Bashir was a pig.

She almost didn't notice the person who slid in beside her, and she almost gasped when he placed his hand on her shoulder. Her disruptor pistol was out of it's holster and into the intruder's face in a microsecond, and the man flinched and let go.

"Beat it, I'm not available." she snarled, glaring at the thin and nervous man.

"I apologize, my mistake in touching you. But you misunderstand my intentions." he quickly replied back, and from his accent Ezri realized he was Betazoid.

Instantly her mental barriers dropped into place, and the stranger blinked, surprised, "Where did you learn to do that?"

"I hang around with Ferengi alot, and envied their ability to naturally block mental intrusions." she replied, still training the disrupter in his general direction. Ezri disliked Betazoids, something else she picked up from her late friend Brunt.

"So I paid a Vulcan priest to give me some pointers." her lips curled at the unintentional pun.

The Betazoid nodded, "Not bad for a beginner, but believe me you could not hold out against somebody as powerful as me for more then a few minutes." he said with a confident smile.

"Then I have this." she said indicating her weapon.

He paled again, then nodded, "So you do. But as I tried to indicate before, I have something you might want."

"I highly doubt that." replied Ezri.

"Really I do. I am serious. I had come here to sell it to Captain Bashir, but I read his mind, he could not meet my price. But from your mind I detect that you would want this even more then he would, and have more then enough credits."

"What are you talking about, Betazoid?" Ezri asked in annoyance, but she had to admit she was becoming interested.

"Call be Tam. Tam Elbron." he replied with a soft smile, as he took a Cardassian isolinear rod from his pocket, and held it up, "This my dear, this...is Dax..."

**To be continued...**


	2. Chapter II

**Chapter II - The Hand of Fate**

_The Planet Sigma Iotia II..._

Ezri materialized on a long stretch of gray beach, and a foamy splash of water flowed up around her knee-high black boots. She paused for a moment to get her bearings, as she was one of those unfortunate Trills who sometimes didn't take well to transporters. It didn't happen that often, but maybe the ten days trapped in a Klingon cargo bay was bringing it on.

After a few seconds of deep breaths the sickly sensation was gone, and Ezri pulled the palm sized Cardassian tricorder from her belt and scanned the kilometre around her. All clear to the center, the device reported back. Ezri set off at a fast pace, disappearing into the jungle foliage beyond the sand. Within ten minutes she emerged from the trees and looked out at the glittering amber force field dome that covered the compound. She was ready for this, Tam Elbron's data had been quite detailed.

She scanned the field with her tricorder and then transmitted the inverse of the shield's harmonic frequency. Right away an opening a meter wide appeared in the barrier and she stepped through onto the permacreate surface. Beyond the tarmac lay a cluster of triangular buildings, in the bland gray Cardassian architectural style. In the distance she could see two guards leaning against a wall, sharing a bottle of spirits, not even looking in her direction.

"Can't be too careful." the Trill muttered to herself, and she slipped rapidly behind the nearest building, out of their view, then consulted the tricorder one more time, and satisfied by it's data she clipped it back onto her belt. _Okay, I'm on the south side of the center, so the building I want is...there!_

She prowled from shadow to shadow until she reached a door, and then examined the lock for a moment. Then she pulled the isolinear rod Elbron had given her from her pocket, and slipped it into a receptacle in the center of the lock. With a chime the portal slid open, and she disappeared inside the darkened interior.

She walked down a corridor, and then descended a turbolift ten stories. The door slid open and she emerged with care, her disrupter at the ready. She had only taken a few steps across the marble floor of the new passage, when booted footsteps from around the corner sent her dashing behind a tall pillar.

She stood stalk still, weapon at the ready as the four Cardassian troopers filed past carrying cargo containers.

_Guess this place needs supplies to_, the Trill thought to herself, then with them out of earshot, hurried off down the passage.

Five minutes later, after checking nearly every door on the level, she found the one she was looking for. The Cardassian lettering translated into "Captured Alien Samples Storage 3F", and her rod gave her access.

_This thing is definitely worth the massive price I paid for it!_ Ezri thought, smiling at the rod.

_Though Tam still ripped me off, but hey, the jerk knew I'd be a motivated buyer. Never try to bargain with a telepath, that's the lesson here..._

Inside the storage chamber she found row-upon-row of floor-to-ceiling vacuum storage lockers, all numbered and labeled. She began scanning them all quickly, but it was easy to find what she sought, as everything was in alphabetical order. Between lockers labeled : Artifact 396J "Sword of Kahless", and Artifact 212B "Veron-T Disruptor", she found it.

Excitedly she hit examined the lock, but there was no place to insert the rod. She frowned at the alphanumeric keypad, "Oh well, I have no choice." Ezri pulled out the tricorder and scanned the mechanism.

She realized right away it would take too long to pick, and the _Bok'ra_ was leaving orbit in less then thirty minutes, so she sighed and pocketed her tricorder. Drawing her weapon she fired on the lock, the green energy blast fried the mechanism instantly to cinders. As she pulled the locker open, klaxons began sounding throughout the room.

Inside lay a dull blue metal cylinder a foot and a half long. Stamped with the symbol of the Alliance, it read Artifact 889P "Symbiont, of a Trill". A blinking indicator on the side of the tube indicted that the contents were in stasis. A thrill shot through the young Trill, she had found it!

"Don't celebrate yet, idiot." Ezri scolded herself under her breath as she ran out the door, "Your not out of the woods yet! If you don't hurry and get out of the compound they'll be _two_ Trill samples stored here!"

She dashed down the passage, not bothering to prowl now, no time, heading for the turbolift. As she approached it the door slid open revealing two guards, phaser rifles at the ready. They saw her and brought them up, but she was faster and fired her own, the first green blast vaporized one guard, but missed the next.

He fired at her wildly and she dodged behind a pillar. His beam cut into it, but could not penetrate. Ezri placed the cylinder on the floor carefully, then holstered her own gun. She pulled a black object the size of a walnut from her belt, squeezed it to activate, then tossed it past the pillar toward the guard, and slapped hands over her eyes.

There was a brilliant flash, she saw it even through her clenched and covered eye-lids, and the Cardy screamed. The Romulan Blinder had done it's work, she grabbed the cylinder, and ran past the guard, who was firing randomly down the corridor, while rubbing his eyes with his free hand. The young merc grinned slyly, the dolt would be blind for days.

Ezri thumbed the controls and the lift shot upwards, and she was relived it even worked, what with the meter-sized hole she had blasted in the lift car's back wall. She exited at ground level and was out onto the compound. Guards were running randomly around the far buildings, and she dashed toward the energy barrier.

By the time she was spotted she already had her tricorder opening a passage, and she jumped through as energy beams slammed into the field around her. She was in the jungle and gone, even as the Cardassians screamed into their combadges for the force field to be shut down.

Ezri emerged onto the beach, breathing hard, and paused to listen to the commotion coming from deep within the foliage. _They're going to tear apart the forest for hours, and never find me, as I'll be on my way back to Trill_, Ezri laughed to herself, and thumbed the comlink on her wrist, contacting the transporter on the _Bok'ra_.

She was still chuckling to herself as she materialized back on the pad, and turned around to retrieve her device under the transporter's console, when the sight of the squad of Klingons, all leveling weapons at her, froze the laugh in her throat.

"You are a poor adversary, Terran." snarled the tallest of the warriors, who wore the sash of command.

"Terran?" shot back Tigan, "Don't insult me."

The Warrior squinted his eyes, then nodded, "Ah... A treacherous Trill, but of course."

_This must be Captain Kragg, commander of the_ Bok'ra_, _thought Ezri, who had overcome her shock as quickly as it had appeared.

She shrugged her narrow shoulders, "You got me, Captain, so what now?"

"Now? Now you will be executed, thief. You were a fool to hide aboard my ship. Did you really think we would not detect your unscheduled transport?" he laughed.

"Ah, right, I forgot to erase the record. Well, how about we strike a deal, there must be something-" she started to say, but halted at the look on the Klingon's face, "I guess not."

"Vaporize the puny female." ordered Kragg, and he turned to leave.

The Klingons raised their rifles.

**To be continued...**


	3. Chapter III

**Chapter III - Lethal Pursuit**

_Onboard the_ Bok'ra_..._**  
**

Faced with imminent death, Ezri Tigan reacted without hesitation. Even as she had spoken to Captain Kragg, her right hand had moved to her wrist comlink and now as the barrel's of the disrupter rifles came to bare on her she tabbed a switch and dropped to the floor of the cargo bay.

_BA-BOOM!_ The merculite charge she had set inside the cargo container that had been her home for the past ten days exploded at her signal, and a scarlet fireball ripped through the bay. Those Klingons that weren't torched were ripped to pieces by the shrapnel of shredded cargo containers!

Alarms screeched and fire suppressors came on, spraying the half-destroyed bay, and dousing the many plasma fires that had sprung up. Ezri rose from lying prone, untouched by the explosion, save for a small cut on the back of her left hand. She had carefully sat the charges that way, so that the explosion would leave about a foot above the floor alone.

She raced out into the smoke filled corridor, and ran to the nearest turbolift. As she stabbed at the controls she was startled by the sound of the cargo bay door behind her opening . She dashed into the lift as it appeared, but couldn't help glancing back, "Oh my..." she gasped at the sight.

Captain Kragg was standing, barely, in the corridor, his one intact arm holding himself up by gripping the wall. His uniform was in pieces and he was splashed scarlet and white with blood and flayed flesh. One intact eye glared sheer hatred at her.

"YOU!" he roared, and began stumbling toward her, "I will rip out your heart with my BARE HANDS, you-"

Then the lift closed and she was gone. Ezri rode in shocked silence for nearly ten seconds, then the lift stopped, opened, and a burly young Klingon holding a power cell stepped aboard. Ezri shrank back against the lift car wall, clutching her own cylinder to her chest like a lifeline. The Klingon, so intent on the emergency, had not noticed her, and just growled "Engineering!" at the lift.

_This is not good, I have to get to the shuttlebay, and he's taking me in the wrong direction_, she thought in alarm, _Oh well, what the heck..._

"Hey, hit the key for the shuttledeck, will you? I forgot to." she said in her best imperious voice, and winced at her lame attempt. _Ugh! I sounded like an angry tribble!_

But amazingly the distracted Warrior bought it. "Wha?! Oh sure." he said without a glance back, and he reached out and pressed the right button.

They rode in silence for nearly thirty seconds, then the Klingon slowly turned his head. Then looked down. Down again, and saw the petite spotted Trill, dressed in black leather and smiling up at him with naughty eyes.

"What in _Kahless_! Who are-" he dropped his cell and started to reach for her, but the metal symbiont cylinder that Ezri rammed against his forehead, dropped him to his knees.

But to the credit of his ridges, the Warrior was still awake, though a bit stunned. With a battle cry Ezri swung back to nail him again, but he grabbed her around the waist, pulling her to the deck! They struggled on the floor of the lift, but he was easily much stronger, and very soon he had her pinned.

With his free hand he drew his _d'k tahg_ knife and released it's bladed prongs. Ezri squirmed in his grasp, but to no avail. Blood from a deep gash in the Klingon's forehead dripped down onto her face, "You...cracked my...my ridges, prepare for death!", he growled.

_This could be it_, she thought to herself as he raised the blade, but her squirming finally paid off as she freed a leg and without hesitation rammed her knee where she knew it would do the most harm.

The Warrior screamed, surprisingly high pitched, and fell backwards. Ezri was up and kicking him in the chin before he could stop wailing. His head snapped back and cracked into the lift wall. Then the lift stopped, Ezri grabbed her find and was out of there.

Gripping the stolen cylinder tightly, she stepped out onto the massive shuttle deck, and glanced around at the pandemonium. Klingon ships were always lit dimly, and the Warriors were intent on the emergency, so none even noticed as she walked up to the nearest warp-capable shuttle and examined it's door.

_Idiots, it's not even locked..._

She palmed it open and climbed aboard. She stored the cylinder in the co-pilots seat, and dropped into the other.

Ezri powered the shuttle up, and then paused. Nodding to herself, she pulled her tricorder from her belt at flipped it on. Tying it into the shuttle's computer, then to the ship's was easy. She had had plenty of time to hack in during the trip here. She transmitted the virus she had created, then closed the link.

Right away things got even more crazy. Fire suppressers activated, spraying foam everywhere. Conduits ruptured all over the ship, and replicators overloaded and started spraying _qagh_ like firehoses. And best of all the shuttlebay doors starting opening and closing randomly.

Tigan activated the controls and the sleek and streamlined little shuttle rose up and shot toward open space.

"YES!" she screamed in triumph as the ship cleared the doors by centimeters, and was away, "All right, yeah!" she slapped the Symbiont Container in jubilation, then yanked back her fingers. "Oops, better not do that."

She brought the shuttle up to maximum impulse and shot away from the _Bok'ra_. A rear view display showed the Klingon ship venting plasma and listing to port. Blue energy spikes crawled across the surface, it was really hurting, Ezri couldn't help smiling. But the display also gave her a perfect view of the torpedo as it launched from the bow of the ship.

"Shields! Where's the shields?!" she glanced down at the control panel, she didn't read Klingon all that well, but found it at the last second.

The projectile hit the shuttle with a massive impact, and sent it spinning end for end. Ezri stayed in her seat, held firmly in place by the auto- restraint field. She managed to hit the thruster control and the ship came out of it's spin. She sent it heading in a wide arc, as green disrupter blasts lit up space all around her!

"Damn, the virus should have disabled their weapons, damn!" she started evasive maneuvers, but knew it was only a matter of time. She had to go to warp fast and hope to lose them.

The communication panel lit up and she looked into the still-bleeding face of Captain Kragg. He glared back, holding a compress over his mangled right eye socket, "_You have nearly crippled us, girl, you are a worthy _jagh_. But now we will blast you all the way back to the Trill hell that spawned you!_"

The _Bok'ra_ righted itself and opened up the full power of it's disruptor banks. Ezri flew her damnedest and tried to find an opening so she could get far enough out of the system so she could go to warp. But then a direct hit disabled the shuttle's shields, and the next cleaved off the left warp nacelle.

The lifesupport panel overloaded, and she was barely able to throw herself to the deck in time as cinders and metal showered the cabin. She got back up and scanned the board, but to no avail, the ship was disabled and listing.

"This will take hours, if ever, to repair, and I have only seconds." she said to the cylinder, it's indicator lights blinked back at her.

"Can't surrender, too far from Iotia to transport there." she activated the ship's deflector shield and channeled all remaining power into it.

That would give her a minute, maybe ninety seconds at best, but nothing more. The battleship roared toward her, energy blasts raining down upon the shuttle, the tiny craft shuddered and pitched. Ezri glanced around wildly, but her gaze only focused on the transporter.

_Wait, I couldn't...could I?_

She hit a control and transferred some power back to the pad, placed the cylinder on it, then reached down and pulled two three-inch long metal rods from her boot and connected them together.

The MTD, or Multidimensional Transport Device, had been perfected, compacted and refined since the original prototype had been built by O'Brien. They were still very hard to come by, but Tigan always believed in being prepared for any situation, that's how you stayed alive as a mercenary.

The transporter's scanner read only the distant planet and the transporters of the _Bok'ra_, the first out of range, the second blocked by the ship's shields. As she activated and played the device over the transporter the display changed and shifted, transferring data from the similar yet startlingly different neighbor reality.

"There!" said the excited Trill, as she read a new destination, and she activated the pad.

The Symbiont's container vanished in a flare of amber light. It would take a few moments to recharge the device. Ezri stowed the MTD, glanced at the tactical readout, and gasped. The deflector's power dropped to zero, and the next energy blasts stuck the ship directly!

The control console overloaded and exploded. Ezri tried to shield herself, but wasn't fast enough, the blast struck her dead on, knocking her backwards and down.

On the bridge of the _Bok'ra_, Captain Kragg smiled as a final disruptor beam hit the stolen shuttle dead center and it exploded into a burning fireball...

**To be continued...**


	4. Chapter IV

**Chapter IV - Two Faced**

_ On the other side of the quantum plain, in the Starfleet Universe..._

_Captain's Log, Stardate: 52948.7_

_Our mission to deliver supplies and personnel to the Federation Study Group on Sigma Iotia II is complete, and we are now departing to Starbase _G-6_ to pick up our First Officer, Commander Tracy Rose, whose mission to Tigra Zeo II should now be complete. On a personal note, this opportunity to visit Iotia was an experience I will not soon forget._

_What a bizarre example of cultural contamination. I had read the reports made by the original _Enterprise_ crew, and those later made by the _USS Valley Forge_, but nothing could prepare me for the strange culture that resides there._

_Imagine a mix of human-like beings whose civilization was divided into two groups: The first half lives a life of gangster warfare right out of the early 20th century back on Earth. The second is a more advanced group who have chosen to emulate Starfleet of more then a hundred years ago, right down to the ranks and uniforms._

_And then imagine the two constantly in conflict. How it came to be like this is a conundrum I leave up to the concealed anthropologists that have resided there for the last ten years. The famous Ambassador Spock's report states, and I quote, "A unique society in great need of a logical role model." while Captain Marilyn Darcy of the _Valley Forge_ said "Never has the failure of the Prime Directive to be utilized been more demonstrated."_

_But I tend to agree with Admiral McCoy's take, "The entire planets crazier then a rabid coon-hound.", at least in his demonstration of exasperation. Because every single attempt at correcting the contamination has escalated the problem. But I digress. We are headed away from the planet and-_

Captain Nathan Fox, commander of the _USS Triumph_, _NCC 26228-B_, was jarred from his recitation of the day's log by a shocking statement from Lt. Vosek, the Vulcan officer currently assigned to tactical.

"Captain. I am reading an unknown transporter signal in Transporter Room 2! Something is beaming in."

"From where? We're the only vessel in the entire sector." demanded Fox.

He turned to signal his Second Officer, but the tall redheaded Irishman was way ahead of him. Lt. Commander Philip Swire jumped to his feet, and headed for the turbolift, tapping his combadge as he went, "Security to Transporter Room 2!"

Swire burst from the lift and strode with purpose down the corridor. His badge chirped and Vosek updated him, "_Sir. I'm reading a second transport, this time it is a lifeform._"

Swire pulled the phaser he had acquired from the storage locker in the turbolift from it's holster and set it on heavy stun. He reached the door to the Transporter and it slid open. His eyes went wide with surprise.

A small, prone humanoid figure lay sprawled across the pad, and half it's clothing was ablaze with plasma fire! Dropping his weapon, Swire pulled the extinguisher from the wall and sprayed the person down, then kneeling he checked for a pulse.

"Good! Still alive, if barely." he slapped his badge, "Sickbay, prepare to receive wounded!"

Security Officers burst into the room as Swire stepped behind the console and beamed the intruder directly to Sickbay, "Sloppy gentleman," he scowled at them, "you should have been here twenty seconds ago, what if it had been the Jem'Hadar?"

"I'm sorry sir. We were in Holodeck 2, training, and-" the Ensign in charge started to say, but the Commander cut him off with a look.

"Won't happen again sir!" the Ensign nodded curtly.

"Sir, look at this." and Swire turned to see another Security Guard crouched by a metal cylinder sitting on the pad.

He was scanning it with a tricorder, and then stood up, as Swire himself bent to examine it, "I think something inside it is alive sir, although the casing deflects most of my scans."

"I believe it is a Trill symbiont." said Swire.

"Amazing sir! You can tell that just by looking at the object?" asked the astonished Officer.

"Actually it's written in Cardassian on the side." replied Swire and he hefted it and dropped it into the arms of the embarrassed crewman, "Get this to Sickbay, and do not use the transporter."

Twenty minutes later Swire entered Sickbay and found the ship's CMO Dr. Laura Tan studying the cylinder with a probe, while a nurse scanned it with a tricorder. He nodded at her and went to the biobed against the far wall, where the young woman lay in deep sleep.

There was no trace of any plasma burns, Tan and her staff had done their job expertly as usual. His eyes widened at the site of the green and purple spots that emerged from her hairline and traveled down the sides of her face. "She's a Trill." he observed out loud.

"Very good Philip, now what species am I?" quipped the Doctor, coming to stand beside him.

"Very humorous, Laura. What I mean is, what is a Trill doing this far out?"

"The mystery deepens." Tan produced a padd from her lab coat's pocket, and handed it to him.

"Lt. Ezri Dax, of _DS9_? What she doing out here?" he demanded, glancing at the patient, "She's changed her hairstyle since this photo."

"That's where it get real interesting. Ezri Dax is a joined trill." said Tan.

"Yes, I know, I met Jadzia Dax, the former host, a charming woman, before she married what's his name, ah yes, Ambassador Worf." replied Swire, starting to become annoyed at Tan's attempt to build up the drama of the situation, "Get to the point, Doctor."

"There is no symbiont present in this young woman." revealed the Doctor, "But I am reading the Dax symbiont in that container over there." she gestured at the blue cylinder.

Confusion furled the Commander's brow, "We both know that can't be possible."

"It is if this isn't our Ezri." replied the smiling CMO, and she walked back to the cylinder, "Look at this, Phil."

She turned the container around to reveal a character stamped in it's side. It looked vaguely familiar, being an amalgam of the Klingon and Cardassian symbols.

"I ran this through the Starfleet database and found a match, under a highly classified file." she replied, then nodded at the nurse, who nodded back and left the Sickbay, leaving the two of them alone, "This is the symbol of the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance from what is known as the-"

"-Mirror Universe. Of course." finished Swire, and his eyes went wide, "Then that would make her..."

From Tan's point of view the Second Officer seemed to strangely hesitate, then a smile spread across his lips. He glanced at her and the grin disappeared as quickly as it had come.

"Phil, what is it?" Tan asked, confused at his reaction.

"Oh, nothing, nothing." he replied, then he slapped his combadge, "Swire to Security, dispatch an armed guard to sickbay."

"Commander, that is hardly necessary." frowned the CMO, "The girl's internal injuries haven't fully healed, and I will have to keep her sedated for at least ten hours."

"Doctor, there are strict regulations regarding this kind of situation, and I believe in them fully." he gave one last glance at the pretty Trill, "Is the symbiont in any kind of danger?"

"No, it's held in a sort of suspension, its healthy." replied the Doctor, as a Security Guard arrived.

He nodded, "Contact me when she awakes. I will report what you've discovered to the Captain, but I don't have tell you not to reveal anything of this to anyone. No one is to speak to Ezri, or whoever she is, until I do, understood?" Tan nodded and Swire headed to the door.

"Wait, you mean you and the Captain, right?" asked the Doctor, tilting her head in confusion.

Swire paused, "Yes...yes, of course." then he was gone.

Back in Sickbay, the patient moaned in her sleep. Deep within her heart, a tiny Romulan implant not detected by the _Triumph_'s CMO continued it's work of filtering the sedative from her blood.

Ezri Tigan's eyes moved rapidly under her closed lids. She was heavily sedated but the images flew through her mind. She breathed softly, and shifted slightly on the biobed. _Where-Where am I?_ The pain was intense, and she feared for the symbiont. But as the pain increased her mind reverted to her memories to distract the body, and she descended into the past...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

_The Space Station_ _known as_ DS9_, six months earlier..._

"Julian, come back here!" said Lt. Ezri Dax after the retreating human, and he stopped.

Dax walked up to him and grabbed his arm, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to complain, but I'm serious. There's no room in your quarters for one person, let alone two."

"But the Alamo model was Miles's and..." he broke off, staring into the distance.

Dax's voice became softer, "I know Julian, believe me. I miss Ben as much as you miss the Chief."

They stared into each other's eyes for a long moment, then Julian smiled.

"Lets talk about it over lunch, okay?" asked the Counselor, and he nodded.

From the shadows of an empty Promenade kiosk, she watched them go, then consulted the padd of data she had downloaded from DS9's computer archive.

Ezri Tigan, Trill merc from the Mirror Universe, stared down at the face of her doppelganger, the joined Trill Ezri Dax. They were very similar. Dax had shorter hair, not as wild as hers, and Dax wore less makeup. And that uniform, ugh! Tigan never wore anything that wasn't black leather, if she could help it.

And the other Ezri was a Counselor, she helped people with their problem's for Tiberius's sake, and she was in love with a Terran! And not just any Terran, but the carbon-copy of that Denebian Slime Devil Bashir. Tigan shivered in disgust.

"But she seems so happy..." whispered Ezri, "It's not fair, why..."

She stood in silence, then hit erase on the pad and dropped it into the corner of the stall. She raised the hood of the heavy Romulan cloak she wore, and headed back to the cargo bay to return to the Mirror Universe. She strode down the corridors of the old Cardassian station, deep in thought.

_Why did I even come here?_ Ezri demanded of herself. _Sure, I told myself I was scouting for business opportunities, but no, instead as soon as I arrived here I downloaded all the information I could on my counterpart and her predecessor. And then I watched her all day. Jeez, I must be insane, this serves no purpose..._

She entered the bay and stepped up to the cargo transporter, then produced her new MTD, activated it with her thumb print. She played it across the console, then set it on time delay and stepped aboard.

As she dissolved into the beam, she again considered her reasons for coming to the other reality. Ezri Tigan had been a mercenary, or merc, since escaping from her terrible home life in the Sappora System, at the age of fifteen.

She had grown tired of her sadistic brothers who would constantly abuse the Terran slaves under their control. When she complained to her mother, Yanas Tigan beat her badly, as she would do every now and then, for her impudence.

Ezri emptied the family credit account and stowed away on a Bolian transport the very next day. After wandering for nearly a year she hooked up with a gang of soldiers for hire whose leader had saved her from Alliance Security when they caught her stealing. She spent three years with them, learning the trade, until she met a Ferengi.

Brunt was a smart man, always the planner, and the two worked well together, and she departed from the other mercs. She and Brunt went into business for themselves. Everything was going fine, until she met the Intendant of Bajor.

Ezri knew the woman was trouble, but making wise decisions was something she had never mastered. She always felt something had been missing from her life, and for awhile she felt she was filling it with the erotic Bajoran.

But when Kira murdered Brunt, that all changed, and their violent separation led her to _Terok Nor_ and the rebels. But she still felt something was not right with her existence, she was drifting, lacking purpose. And then her curiosity about her own doppleganger started her wondering. Had the Dax symbiont of her Universe been ment for her? Was that her destiny? But it was lost, killed with her host, Jadzia, battling the Alliance.

What a waste...

In her deep forced sleep Ezri's mind shifted to the chance meeting with the Betazoid Elbron, then she sped forward and the recent events came at her faster and faster, she was on Iotia, she was running, she was back on the Bok'ra, then the shuttle was hit by disruptor fire, began to break up and she fell back onto the activating transporter pad and-

Ezri screamed!

With a jerk she sat up on the biobed, eyes wide with shock from the filtered drugs and the pain.

"Dax!" she gasped out, "Wh-Where's the symbiont? Where, uh! Ugh!" she clutched at her newly fused ribs in agony as she slid from the biobed onto unsteady legs.

She looked down at herself in the slight med gown. _Damn, I'm naked under this, where's my clothes?_ And then she noticed the man in the Starfleet uniform lying prone on the floor beside the bed.

"Okay..." she said to herself, and she grabbed his phaser, not one to ignore any opportunity, then turned to leave and froze, staring.

The symbiont container lay on a table by the door, and it was open. Even more amazing was the Terran Starfleet Officer who stood over it with his hands disappearing inside. From the wrists up he appeared human, but below them he was a flowing mass of golden brown fluid! He was in deep concentration and hadn't noticed Ezri's loud reawakening. But he noticed her presence now as the phaser snapped up and she nailed him in the head with a heavy stun shot.

He released his connection with the symbiont and stumbled back against the wall. Ezri dashed forward and slapped the container closed again and sealed it.

She leveled her weapon at the creature who would be human, "I don't know what you are, but you signed your death warrant by touching this!"

He had reverted back to fully human and started to get up, murder in his eyes, but Ezri flipped to a higher stun setting and blasted him again, "Maybe you didn't hear me, monster, I'm gonna spin this phaser to max, and then you're going to be a stain on the deck!"

Now unable to properly hold his form the creature raised it's arms pulsating with the golden fluid of it's true nature, "Please, you don't understand, I wasn't trying to hurt the symbiont, I just needed information on where you come from! I want to go there myself."

Ezri shifted the weapon to it's highest setting, "Who are you?"

"My name is Philip Swire, or at least that's the name of the deceased human I replaced. The name I've chosen for myself is Loth. I'm a hunted Changeling, I went against my own. But I can only evade them for so long, they'll eventually find me and kill me!" he pleaded, beginning to panic.

"Wait, you're a Shapeshifter? Like Odo, from _Terok Nor_?" asked Ezri, intrigued despite herself, "There's other Shapeshifters? Well, hah, dumb question."

He nodded, "But in your Universe, I could be free, they would never think to look for me there." Loth said, slowly getting up.

She considered for a second, then shook her head, "No, you're too dangerous, Odo was a menace, I'm calling this ship's Security."

"I wouldn't." Loth said, and Ezri paused reaching for the comlink beside the door, looked back at him.

He formed back into his fully-human shape, "Starfleet now has very specific regulations for encountering people like you. You will be detained and taken to Earth for interrogation. It might be years or never before they let you go home. And no way could you keep the symbiont."

Ezri stayed her hand, and then dropped it back to her side. The Changeling smiled.

"Okay," she asked reluctantly, "what exactly do you have in mind?"

**To be continued...**


	5. Chapter V

**Chapter V - Back to Back**

_ The Sigma Iotia System, deep inside the Mirror Universe..._

"_Are you sure she's dead_?" demanded Gul Lasaran, commander of the Iotian Detention Center, and the look of contempt he gave Captain Kragg emanated obviously from the viewscreen on the Bridge of the _Bok'ra_.

"The witch is no more, I assure you!" Kragg snapped back, "I gave the order myself for the shuttle she was on to be destroyed." the Warrior slammed a fist into the palm of his hand, causing him to noticeably wince, as the arm had only been reattached a few hours early.

Gul Lasaran smiled at his discomfort, "_Maybe I should dispatch a Cardassian sensor team, just to make sure_."

"That will not be necessary! Her ship was destroyed and there was nowhere for her to beam to." snapped the Klingon, rubbing his abused shoulder, "The only thing within range of the shuttle's transporters was the _Bok'ra_, and we had our shields up."

"_Fine then. It will have to do, I guess. You know, Captain, this would never have happened if you Klingons had better security on your vessels._" Lasaran scowled.

Kragg's face twisted with rage, "Your entire security force failed to stop her from breaking into a high-security area, Gul! And then they allowed her escape back here. You call that superior security? I don't think so. This communication is over!" and he severed the channel.

Kragg wrenched his knife from his belt and hurled it into the now darkened viewscreen, burying it up to the hilt. Sparks flew and the display overloaded and shattered.

"That Trill witch be damned!" he whirled on his cowering Science Officer, "Marl! Are we absolutely sure there was no chance that she escaped?"

"Uh...well, of course she didn't." stammered the nervous Officer, "I mean, there were some strange readings just before the ship exploded, but they can't mean-"

"WHAT?!" screamed Kragg, "You never mentioned this before, what kind of strange readings? Tell me!"

Marl paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, as his Commanding Officer glared down on him with his one good eye. He glanced at the smoking viewscreen, then back at the Captain, "Well, I thought they were caused by her shuttle's damaged equipment, it took a pretty good beating before it was gone."

The SO paused to lick his lips, "There were convoluted quantum radiation readings, most likely from her transporter's phase transition coils, just prior to the ship exploding. It happened twice, but they could have been caused by the warp core overloading, yes that must be it."

Kalk, the Chief Engineer, piped up from his Station, "No, my readings show the shuttle's warp core was never activated."

Marl glared at the Engineer scathingly. Kalk smiled back, obviously enjoying his fellow Warrior's discomfort. Kragg roared at Marl, "Mind your station!" then he pointed a furious leather gauntlet at the grinning Engineer, "And you'rr next, Kalk! You have much to answer for, considering the state my ship is in."

He spun back to Marl, "What else could be the cause of the readings?"

Marl scanned through the data again, then ran it against all transporter records in the ship's database.

The console bleeped and then produced a match. Marl read it and the look in his eyes did not make Kragg feel any better, "Uh...uh, well, sir, I think I might have found an explanation for the odd readings."

Kragg pushed him out of the way and quickly scanned what he had found. Then with a cry of fury that could be heard throughout the ship, he smashed the display with Marl's head, and kicked over his command chair.

In the parallel universe opposite to Kragg's, in the exact same position where the damaged Bok'ra sat listing and crawling with repair teams, the Starfleet Decker-Class starship, _USS_ _Triumph_, hung in space, her scanners probing everywhere. And in his ready room, Captain Nathan Fox stared at his Second Officer in confusion.

"Repeat again what happened, Commander Swire." ordered the angry Captain of the _Triumph_.

"Yes sir." Swire smoothed down the front of this uniform, "I entered Sickbay and asked Nurse James to leave so I could perform some scans on the symbiont container. Earlier in the Transporter Room it had demonstrated some reflective qualities and I wanted to make sure it didn't pose any danger to the ship."

"Go on..." prompted Captain Fox.

"Anyway, sir, the patient, Tigan, woke up while my back was turned. She quickly knocked out the Security Guard that was there and grabbed his weapon. But I managed to disable her, and locked her in restraints on her biobed." finished Swire.

"But sensor's show she fired the phaser more then once, and there were no burn marks anywhere in Sickbay." stated Fox.

"Yes sir. I was hit by her blasts." he stood impassively.

"You took more then one hit from a phaser? And then still were able to subdue a woman who was able to hit a Starfleet Security Guard hard enough that he has no memory whatsoever of the event?" asked the perplexed Captain.

"Yes, sir."

"Uh-huh." Fox stared at Swire for a long moment, something was wrong here, his instincts were telling him this situation smelled worse then a Breen barbecue, "And where is the prisoner now?"

"She has been tranquilized and remains under guard in Sickbay. Security Ensign Powers is watching her." replied Swire.

"Good, and there she will stay until the Starfleet Security ship, _Blade of Tellar_, arrives. The coded response I have received from Command was explicit. We are to remain here, to make sure nobody and nothing else comes through from the other Universe." Fox clicked off his display and leaned back in his chair, "Fine. You are dismissed, Commander. Get some rest, you must need it."

Swire nodded and left, but his destination wasn't his quarters. Three minutes later he was in the hanger bay.

Second Officer Swire sat in the pilot's chair on board the _USS Nile_, having dismissed the lone Engineer who had been monitoring the bay. The _Nile_ was the _USS Triumph_'s runabout, and Swire watched it's time display reach the agreed upon moment, then hit transmit on the runabout's comlink.

Instantly the computer virus he had extracted from Ezri Tigan's tricorder was transferred into the _Triumph_'s computer core. He had worked to modify it to work on the Federation ship. Within seconds it's effects became visible.

Alarms went off, and the lights went out. The Chief Engineer's voice boomed over the comm system, alerting all aboard to the failure of nearly every shipboard system.

"Now for phase two." he said to himself and slapped his combadge, "Swire to Ensign Powers."

In Sickbay the nervous Security Officer glanced at the sleeping Trill, then answered, "Powers here, go ahead."

"Powers, I'm on the bridge and we think the system failure is being caused by something in that symbiont container, can you check it?" asked Swire as he activated the _Nile_'s transporter controls.

"One moment, Commander." Powers took one last glance at the dozing girl, then walked over to look at the strange pod.

With his back turned he didn't see Ezri rise and prowl up behind him, but he felt the tug on his phaser. He whirled around in surprise to see the fully awake Trill, and with a growl he lunged for her! But she ducked under his arms, using her petite size against him, and dropped into a crouch.

"Wha--get back here!"

She drop-kicked his legs, sending him tumbling to the floor, and was on him in a second! Powers was shocked at her speed, she was a blur. Before he could recover from his fall she kneed him in the groin and elbowed him in the face, breaking his nose.

As he screamed in pain she had his phaser out of his holster, and she somersaulted off him into a crouch. As he tried to get up she stunned him and he knew no more. Ezri grabbed his combadge and signaled Loth, the Changeling disguised as Swire, "Transport me in three seconds."

She stood, picked up the cylinder containing Dax, and concealed the slim phaser in the back of her underwear. Then she heard the familiar hum and vanished in a swirl of energy.

As soon as Ezri arrived on the _Nile_'s pad she dashed forward and into the co-pilot's chair. She set the pod down and turned to Loth, "Get my stuff, now."

"On it." he targeted storage locker 3H on Deck 7 and beamed the bag containing all Ezri's effects to their transporter pad.

"Let's go! Now!" ordered the Trill, and he powered up the runabout's engines, the ship rose from the bay floor.

"Why isn't the hanger door opening? You said the virus would do that." asked the nervous shapeshifter.

"Oh, well, the virus isn't perfect." replied Ezri, and she scanned the unfamiliar console, found what she was looking for, and activated the runabout's shields, "Go, now, full Impulse, we can't wait."

"What?! Are you insane?" asked Loth, but Ezri reached over to his controls and punched the Impulse controls.

They both were thrown back into their seats as the runabout went from hover to full Impulse in the hanger bay. They shot through the hanger doors like they were paper and exploded out into space in a firery blast of escaping air and charred door debris!

"Of course I'm insane, you should know that about me." replied Ezri with a grin, as the shocked Loth leveled the _Nile_ out and began plotting a course, "Now, get us to _DS9_."

The _Nile_ jumped to maximum Warp, leaving behind the listing and darkened Decker-Class cruiser. It's ejected warp core spun off into space and exploded, leaving them powerless and completely disabled. Repairs would take hours, and then they could only travel at Impulse, so pursuit was not an option.

Seventy-two hours later the runabout dropped out of Warp and lay just out of sensor range of _DS9_. Ezri was amazed at the speed of the little craft. What had taken the _Bok'ra_ nearly ten days to travel, the _Nile_ had made it in less then half the time. Sure, they had traveled at high Warp the entire way, but still, the Klingon warship could never have sustained such speeds for so long.

_Score one for the other paradigm_, Ezri frowned.

She stood and brushed down her newly restored black leather outfit, which showed none of the plasma or combat damage it had received during her battle with the Alliance. Another tip of the hat to Federation technology. She checked her weapons and equipment one last time, the moment had arrived. She signaled Loth in the cargo hold.

The hatch hissed open and he entered the cabin. Ezri hadn't seen much of the Changeling over the last three days, he had taken advantage of the solitude to revert to his liquid state, something that had been very hard for him to do back on the _USS Triumph_.

"Are you sure you don't want to wear a Starfleet uniform, it would most likely be easier to get around on the station?" he asked, but Ezri glared at him, just like the last time he had asked the question.

"Whatever..." Loth concentrated and morphed from his Swire appearance to that of a Vulcan trader, an image they had pulled from the runabout's database, "How's this?"

"Perfect, you look exactly like what's his name? Oh yeah, Tuvok." she glanced down at the readout and spied their target, "Let's go."

They stepped aboard the transporter pad, Ezri hefting her newly replicated duffel bag which housed the symbiont tube, then she gave an order that activated the preprogrammed command sequence she had created.

The _Nile_ shot forward, heading directly for the station. The two fugitives had been monitoring subspace traffic, Starfleet was looking for her and Swire, had been for more then twenty-four hours, and _DS9_ would have the _Nile_'s profile on record. The runabout flew over the Cardassian station and let loose with it's modified weapons. With no shields up the station rocked from it's direct hit, and ionized energy spread across it.

"Energize!" ordered Ezri and they vanished from the ship, which then pealed away for _DS9_ and dropped into the wormhole.

Moments later the _USS Defiant_, the ship assigned to the station, detached and disappeared into the Gamma Quadrant after the runabout.

The two appeared in an empty corridor just off of the Promenade. Ezri pulled out her modified Cardassian tricorder and quickly scanned, "It worked, the _Nile_'s phaser barrage screwed up their sensors, they didn't detect the transport."

"And their ship will take too much time to run down the runabout, let alone penetrate it's shields and realize nobody's aboard. Lets get to a transporter." said Loth and Ezri led the way, bound for the cargo bay she always used.

They entered the darkened bay and the door shut behind them, "Someone with your abilities will be very valued in my Universe, you can live very well." said Ezri.

Loth shrugged, "I don't know, I might go to the alternate Gamma Quadrant, maybe the-"

"Hold it, Tigan!" boomed a voice from the darkness, and the two froze as the lights came on to reveal a squad of Bajoran Security Officers, leveling rifles at them.

The origin of the voice entered the circle and Ezri's eyes went wide, it was-"Kira?! How--Intendant, what are you doing-" then she caught herself, as she realized her mistake.

The commander of _DS9_ smiled and nodded "That's right, I'm the real article, not that twisted egomaniac from your dimension. Did you really think I would be fooled by such an obvious trick?"

"Well," shrugged the Trill merc, "can't fool them all. But how did you know I would come here?"

"Because I told her that's what _I_ would do." came a familiar voice from behind them, Ezri whirled, eyes wide.

Lt. Ezri Dax, her counterpart, stood framed in the cargo bay door, arms folded and smiling with triumph, "So, we finally meet. Not here to spy on me this time?"

Tigan's mouth opened and closed, nothing coming out, then she clamped it shut.

The Starfleet Universe Ezri nodded, and then turned to Loth, still in his Vulcan form, "And this is Tuvok right? Or your version of ours, who is lost in our Delta Quadrant." she turned back to Tigan, "Where's Commander Swire? Starfleet is eager to ask him some questions concerning his treason."

Tigan and Loth exchanged a quick look, so, they didn't know everything, that could work to their advantage. Ezri looked back, her eyes cold, "You have no right to detain us, we don't belong here. We were brought to your reality against our will, and we are just trying to return home. Let us go, we won't come back."

"Hah!" laughed Colonel Kira, "You wish! You're guilty of sabotaging the _Triumph_ and stealing a runabout, if you had just asked to be returned when you turned up on the _Triumph_, you would have been informed that's Starfleet policy. There was no need to do what you did."

Tigan turned on Loth, glaring, and he smiled sheepishly and shrugged, "What can I say, I needed your help."

Kira gaped in surprise, "By the Prophets, I've never seen a Vulcan smile, you're not Tuvok, what-" but Ezri Tigan had taken full advantage of the sudden confusion! She quickdrew her disrupter and blasted the lighting panel above them.

As it exploded the bay was thrown into darkness and Loth leapt forward, faster then any humanoid could move and crashed into Kira. The two went down in a twist of fighting limbs.

Tigan, blinked rapidly in a memorized pattern and her thermo contacts lit up, revealing the bay bathed in soft shades of green and gray. Spotting the panicked Dax, she charged her and caught her neck in a tight hold, pressing the barrel of her weapon into her neck, "Hold it, babe."

The emergency lights came on, revealing the confused and milling Bajoran officers, who all froze at the sight of Dax being held captive by Tigan. Kira stepped out from behind a crate, brushing dust from her uniform, "All right, no one make any sudden moves."

"Me and my friend are going to step on that transporter pad and go home, and this pale imitation of me is coming too. We'll send her back, you have our promise, soon as we're back where we belong." ordered Tigan, and she pulled Dax through the crowd of annoyed Bajorans and onto the cargo pad, "Tuvok, where are you, get over here!"

"Uh, don't worry about Tuvok, I'm going in his place." interjected Colonel Kira, giving Tigan a meaningful look, and Ezri grasped the situation, so she reached down with her free hand and pulled the MTD from her boot.

"No way am I going to your Universe, let me go!" demanded Dax, as Tigan played the device over the controls and set the timer for a delayed transport.

Kira stepped aboard and grabbed Dax from her grasp, "Kira, what are you doing?" demanded the confused Starfleet Trill, and the Changeling smiled, as the real Kira rose on unsteady legs from behind a crate and drew her weapon.

"It's a Changeling! Don't let them escape!" ordered the enraged Bajoran woman, but the transporter chimed on and Loth reverted back to Swire. He pushed Dax off the pad roughly.

"Solids, so easily fooled. I won't miss this reality, no challenge." grinned Loth.

"See ya, Dax, change that hair, you make me look like a boy." chided Ezri Tigan, and they were gone.

"Dammit!" roared Kira, chucking her phaser to the ground.

In the embrace of the beam, Ezri Tigan smiled with relief, "It's over, I did it, I'm going home!"

Suddenly, in the middle of the transport, it changed, the transfer perverted somehow, and the two of them screamed in horrible pain! It was like they were being yanked--no torn!--sideways! The feeling was agony.

Finally they materialized, not on _Terok Nor_, but in an all too familiar cargo bay. Ezri collapsed to the floor, retching and gasping. Loth lay convulsing beside her, barely able to hold his human form, "Where...ahh...what happened...Ezri..."

"Please no, not here, how?" gasped Ezri trying to rise, horrified at their location.

She was grabbed painfully by her hair and hoisted into the air to stare into the sole glaring eye of Captain Kragg, commander of the repaired _Bok'ra_, on which she and Loth now found themselves.

As she clawed at his hand in agony, he spit in her face and roared, "Got you, witch! Can't escape this time, can you?" and he dropped her to the floor.

She pulled out her pistol and weakly tried to raise it, but Kragg easily pulled it from her grasp. He handed it to Marl and the Science Officer stuck it in his belt, "Take them to a holding cell, while I make preparations. Tonight I will feast upon her heart, as I swore I would!"

Ezri struggled and received a mailed fist in the side of the head in return. As she fell into darkness, her last image was of Loth, unmoving, also being dragged off to their doom.

**To be continued...**


	6. Chapter VI

**Chapter VI - Beyond Shadow, Light**

_ Three parsecs outside of the Bajoran System, deep inside the Mirror Universe..._

Ezri Tigan was tossed like a ragdoll, bruised, naked, and bleeding into the slave pit of the Klingon Cruiser _Bok'ra_.

Captain Kragg's bodyguards had worked her over for close to two hours, but they had been stopped by a communication from the Captain himself. He originally had planned to have them execute her, then serve her heart at the evening meal.

But a message ordering them back into the heart of Klingon space had changed everything. A new Regent was to be finally chosen to replace the captured and dishonored Worf, and there was to be a massive celebration. And that meant drinking, feasting, and most importantly, combat.

What an opportunity! Kragg had lost face thanks to that Trill slut, it was the talk of the Empire. What a better way to regain his reputation, by displaying Tigan in front of the most important members of Klingon society, then killing her in honorable combat.

So the Captain stopped his men short of killing her, and ordered the _Bok'ra_ home at maximum Warp, it would be glorious!

Ezri lay curled in a fetal position, only half conscious, her only companion pain. The floor seemed to spin, this was it, everything came down to this. _I have accomplished nothing, I wasted my life, I'm worthless. Now I die like an animal_, thought the girl, the tears finally coming.

She hadn't cried before, at least, not since she was very young. She hadn't cried when her mother beat her, or when her older brother had tortured and assaulted her that one summer when she was twelve. She hadn't even cried when her best friend was murdered by a woman she had convinced herself she loved. Even though she knew that the same friend had loved her, though the poor Ferengi had never said it.

But she cried now, cried for the lost opportunities, the life she could have lived, the things she would now never do. The love of friends or a lover that she would never truly experience.

And she felt a hand on her shoulder, and she flinched, horrified at the prospect of more abuse, while secretly wishing, deep down, that it would all finally end.

But it was not pain that the owner of the hand intended, as she was lifted into the air and carried into the deeper darkness of the pit.

She was cleaned by gentle hands, her wounds dressed to the best of their meager abilities, clothing donated. She was given some gruel from the limited wall dispenser, foul tasting but warm. She dropped into a deep sleep.

She awoke hours later and sat up abruptly, then regretted it as her fractured ribs ground against each other. She coughed into her hands, and wiped the blood onto the shredded pants she wore.

Looking up she saw glowing eyes peering back at her, from the dimly lit and foggy pit.

"Whoever you are, thank-you." she croaked. _Damn , my voice, I sound 80 years old._

The creatures, for as her eyes adjusted to the low light she saw they were more wolf then human, they crowded in amongst themselves. One spoke, but she could not understand it, it's voice was like electronic modulation.

"They say you're welcome.", came a masculine voice from behind her, and she turned to see a Terran male, medium height and powerful bodied, clad only in torn pants. He had short cropped grayish-brown hair, slightly wavy, and deep, piercing eyes. He was in good shape and appeared to be in his early forties.

"You can understand them?" asked Ezri, and he nodded.

"It would be impossible to speak it, but I have picked up enough Breen to converse casually." he replied.

Ezri looked in shock at the unblinking gazes of the aliens. Breen!

"I hope that shirt isn't too big, but it's all I had. Not that you can really be choosy." he said, but before she could thank him for his gift a second, leaner human stepped from the mist and approached him.

"The ship just went to high warp, Noah can tell from the vibration of the deckplates." stated the newcomer, and he glanced down with disapproval at the Trill.

Ezri decided it was time to try to stand, and she slowly did so. She felt like she had been dragged behind a hovercar for a few kilometers, but hopefully she would live. _Just long enough to be executed_, she thought morosely, and dropped back into her despair.

"Why did you help her, she's not human. Trill's have slaves too. Should have left her to die." said the thinner Terran, with the dark, military crewcut. He looked her up and down and leered, "Oh, I see, yeah, maybe she'll be good for something."

"Shut-up, Max." growled the other man, and the two glared at each other for a long moment, then Max gave in, shrugged his annoyance and strode off.

"Ignore Max, he won't give you any trouble, I'm in command here." the older man said.

"Command? How is a slave in command?" scoffed Ezri, then wished she hadn't, as he had done nothing but be kind to her.

"I'm no slave, and neither are my people. We had our own scout ship, out from Olympia Prime. We wandered too close to Alliance territory and were captured. They haven't said what they plan to do with me and my three officers." he replied, ignoring her insult.

Ezri furled her brow, she had never heard of Olympia Prime, "Are you suggesting there are Terran colonies that aren't enslaved?"

He said nothing, only stared at her.

"Do you know where we are going?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Yes, to the heart of Klingon space, to a place called Ty'Gokor, you heard of it?"

He paused, deep in thought, then nodded, "That's Klingon Military HQ, right. Hmm..."

"What?" she asked.

"Wha? Oh nothing, just thinking." he stared at her for a long moment, then nodded as if he had come to an important decision, "Okay, how did you end up here?"

Ezri considered the situation. She didn't even know this guy, why was she even talking to him? But she felt she could trust him, though she didn't know why. Anyway, what did she have to loose?

"My name is Ezri Tigan, I'm a mercenary, and it's a long story." she replied.

"If Noah's right, we have more then two days for you to tell it." he said back.

He sat down on the dirty floor, and after hesitating for a long moment she joined him.

"I was Captain of our ship, a Terran defender called the_ Equinox_." he said, "My name is Captain Ransom. But you can call me Rudy."

Ezri smiled, Rudy, she liked that name, and she began her tale...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

Marl, the science officer of the _Bok'ra_, stood outside of the ship's specimen cell, in his Science Lab. He stared in fascination at the redheaded Terran that lay on the floor. Or what appeared to be a Terran. He pressed a key on the cell's control pad, and a heavy current instantly was fed through the floor.

The being within cried out and clutched at itself. The human form vanished, to be replaced by a golden brown liquid form. Marl turned off the power and Loth reverted back to his human shape.

"Impressive, you are the same species as the former shapeshifting Overseer, Odo, from Terok Nor, right?" asked Marl.

"Former?" asked the Changeling, despite the pain, "He's dead?"

"Yes, killed by a Terran from your Universe. How ironic." laughed Marl, "Is that where he came from, are there more of you?"

"Oh no, hthe [i]Terok Nor[/i] Odo was most likely from here. See, we have an Odo of our own back home, he's kind of the leader of our people now." said Loth, "No if there was an Odo here, he is but one of thousands. And they command an empire that could crush your pitiful Alliance, if they were aware of it."

"Really, you don't say? Too bad you won't live to tell them about us." and Marl hit the switch again. Loth screamed!

"Very impressive." Marl said to himself, and looked forward to delivering his prize for dissection, to the top Klingon exobiologists in Ty'Gokor...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

Two days later, the _Bok'ra_ dropped out of warp and flew at impulse into Ty'Gokor. It glided amongst the massive asteroids that made up the system, and got in line behind a convoy of Klingon starships, all waiting to dock with the massive space station that housed the Klingon Military High Command.

In the slave pit, Ezri Tigan was talking with Marla Gilmore, one of Captain Ransom's crew. She was a slim blonde, a nervous, fidgeting woman, but Ezri had taken an immediate liking to her.

The door abruptly opened, several Warriors stormed in, and the Breen scurried away into the darkness in fear.

"We aren't here for you, vermin." growled the Klingon in charge, "All Terrans, step forward!"

Ransom, Maxwell Burke, and the tall, dark-skinned Noah Lessing stepped from the mist, to stand beside Marla and Ezri.

"This is it?" asked the annoyed Klingon, coming forward to examine the four of them, plus Tigan.

"You killed everyone else." snapped Max, and the Klingon growled and slapped him to the floor.

Max was about to leap up and attack, but a look from Ransom stayed him.

"Well, you'll all have to do. You look healthy enough." said the Klingon, then he grabbed Ezri by the arm, "You're coming with us to the Infirmary, the Captain wants you in top condition."

As she was dragged out of the room, Rudy took a step forward, as if to try and stop them, but Marla halted him with a hand on his shoulder, "There's nothing we can do, Captain."

"I only hope she can survive long enough, then maybe..." said Noah, but Ransom glared him into silence.

Ezri was taken to the Infirmary, and handed over to the ship's massively fat Klingon doctor. The woman ordered her to strip and then into the sonic shower, all the while two guards watched and leered. Afterwards she scanned and probed the shivering Trill, and then repaired all her abrasions and cracked bones. Finally she was given an injection to speed up recovery.

Ezri rubbed at her stinging limbs and torso, but was glad to be healthy again. Her conversations with Rudy, Marla and Noah over the past two days had changed her opinion on how she was going to handle what was coming.

She was dead, that was a given, but that bastard Kragg was planning to kill her in the arena on Ty'Gokor. And now she had a new goal. To kill him before he killed her, and then let them gut her, for all she cared.

The Doctor slapped her out of her pleasant image of snapping Kragg's neck with her thighs, "Pay attention! Here." and she handed Ezri a bundle.

She thrilled in excitement, it was her clothes, minus the jacket. Maybe-

"And Kragg said to tell you every bit of hidden technology and weaponry has been purged." smiled the obese MD, and Ezri glared back.

She slipped in to the shorts and bra, then the white shirt. The black leather pants, belt and boots finished the ensemble. She was beginning to feel like herself again.

She was escorted not back to the slave pit, but to the _Bok'ra_'s Brig. As the first guard prepared her cell, the second reached over and grabbed her about the waist.

"You're small, but I don't mind." he leered down at her, and slid his hands onto her posterior and squeezed, "I'll show you a good time, your last before the Captain disembowels you in the arena!"

Ezri slid her hands around his waist, let him bite at her neck and moaned in pleasure. This encouraged him, and his groping became more frenzied, so he didn't notice her slipping his knife from it's sheath.

But he did notice it as she thrust it into his belly and twisted! He roared in agony and released her, but she yanked the barbed blade from him, and slashed upward, cutting his throat.

He stared down at the petite Trill, gurgled, then collapsed dead to the floor. Ezri whirled to face the other guard, but a disrupter blast sent her flying back into the cell.

The remaining Klingon stepped up and activated the force field, "Maybe you _will_ be a challenge for our Captain." he smiled, and holstered his pistol.

"I'm going to break his neck, I assure you." growled Tigan, getting up, the blast had only been light stun.

The guard's laughter filled the Brig as he dragged the dead body of the other Warrior from the room...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

Ezri awoke from her brief nap, as the force field was turned off. She raised one eyebrow as she counted the Klingon guards who awaited her.

She stood and chuckled, "It takes six of you to escort little me? That must be why I've been able to kill so many of you on this ship, you're not Klingons, you're actually Romulans."

Growls rose from the ranks, and for a moment it looked like they might rush her, but Science Officer Marl snapped an order quieting them. Ezri strode out of the cell and set off down the corridor, the Warriors quickly following.

Marl stepped up beside her and grabbed her arm.

"Oh, I know the way, we're going to the Transport Chamber, right?" said Ezri with a sly smile.

Marl glared down at her, "If the Captain hadn't chosen you to face him in the arena, I would kill you right here, with your own weapon." and he gripped the butt of Ezri's disrupter, nestled in his belt, for emphasis.

They all crowded into the turbolift and Ezri turned to face him, spotting the Science Branch insignia on his sash, "Huh. You're the one who figured out I escaped into the other Universe, didn't you."

"Yes. With ease." he smiled back, "The rebels are not the only ones who have developed such technology. I studied the Alliance security file on you, and easily guessed your return point would be _Terok Nor_."

Ezri frowned at that, "You and some others as well. I've got to rethink my tactics."

As the exited from the lift, Marl went on, eager for the rare audience, "And then I modified our transporter to scan for the matching quantum flexure, so we could detect and intercept you when you returned. The _Bok'ra_ has the latest in transporter technology, it can transport from a very long range."

"Wonderful. After I kill Kragg, I'll come for you next. You know way too much, an incredible achievement for a Klingon drone." she said smartly, and three of the guards drew their weapons at the comment.

Marl glared at them and they reholstered. They entered the Transport Chamber and Marl gestured for Ezri to mount the pad. She did so and he nodded to the operator.

As the unit began to hum, he saluted her, "I regret I must watch your death from here, as Kragg has left me in command. You have been a clever enemy. Please save a seat for me in the feasting halls of _Sto-Vo-Kor_."

"Funny, I'm pretty sure a rotting pile of _qagh_ like you is going to _Gre'thor, _the Klingon Hell for cowards." Ezri shot back as she dematerialized, and the Klingon guards howled with laughter at the enraged Science Officer.

She appeared on a vast tarmac, standing on a small raised dais, surrounded by a force field fence. She glanced up and around from her vantage point and gasped. Naked space glittered above and around the craggy plain on which she stood.

Klingon starships of every description hovered above and beside the asteroid on which the headquarters hall and garrison were based. Only a massive force field separated her from the endless vacuum. In the distance she could see stars glittering between the infinite number of rocks that made up the star system. An incredible testament to the power and confidence of the Klingon part of the Alliance.

She glanced around and spotted the Breen pack from the _Bok'ra_'s slave pit, milling to her left. Turning to her right she smiled at the sight of Captain Ransom, leading his own group, toward her.

He grasped her shoulders, smiling for the first time since she had met him, what was it about him, a Terran for Tiberius's sake, that gave her such a warm feeling? She wished she had more time to get to know him...

"You're alive. Good." Ransom said, releasing her, and she looked at him cock-eyed.

"Only good?" she asked, and he chuckled, then became serious again, "Nope, not dead yet."

"Well it was either dead or maybe you were a spy." laughed Marla, hugging the Trill, and to her surprise, Ezri hugged back.

Max sniffed, "How do we know she's not? I heard she's Kragg's whore, we can't trust her."

Ezri released Marla and strode serenely up to Burke. She smiled demurely at him, then piledrived him in the belly. He let out a screech and fell to his knees, clutching his stomach. Grabbing his hair she wrenched his head up and leaned in close.

"Give me one reason not to kill you right here, Terran." and she spit in his eye, then Ransom was between them.

"Enough, both of you!" and Ezri stepped back, letting Max rise.

"This isn't the time to fight amongst ourselves. We have to keep our wits about us, remember what's at stake." glared Rudy, addressing them all, and Max reluctantly grunted his agreement.

Ransom sent the three Terrans off, then turned back to a puzzled Ezri. "What are you talking about?" she demanded, "What's at stake."

"Don't worry about it, you have to concentrate on your duel." said Ransom, "I heard some guards talking as they brought us down here, wow, Kragg really has it in for you."

"I never do anything small." replied Ezri, "Uh, Rudy, uh, I was wondering-"

But her words were drowned out by the blaring of the Klingon Anthem, and they all turned to see the massive doors of both the garrison and the main gathering hall slide open. A massive amount of Klingons filed out, and headed for the center of the tarmac.

With a huge mechanical hum panels slid open and two parallel rows of stands rose from the ground, easily enough seating for two thousand. The stands quickly filled, and then the dais on which Ezri and the Terrans stood began moving forward, and it slid on hidden tracks to line up with other pens from elsewhere on the asteroid.

Ezri counted nine cages in total, all lined up, awaiting the coming games. While mostly they contained Terrans, she made out members of other species, like Vulcans, more Breen and even a Gorn. The roar from the stands was intense, and speech was impossible.

Finally after many minutes, a tone sounded, and all became quiet. A parade of elegantly armored older Klingons, escorted by a squad of the biggest guards Ezri had ever seen, emerged from the great hall, and took their reserved seats in the lowest row in the stand to their right.

A massive pole rose from the center of the divided arena, and it came to a stop 3 stories above. With a great flourish a flag was unfurled, bearing upon it a Klingon House emblem. A chant began and soon cycled up to massive pitch, as nearly every Klingon present roared one name, over-and-over, "MARTOK! MARTOK! MARTOK!"

A heavily muscled, mature Klingon stood from the center of the reserved section and waved to the crowd. They all cheered, then became silent once again.

"He must be the new Regent." announced Noah.

"Wow, your powers of observation never cease to amaze me." scoffed Max.

"Let the combat _commence_!" roared the newly appointed Regent.

Over the next few hours the pens were opened and the beings within were either led or forced into one of the two arena circles. Some in groups, others on their own. Most didn't survive the combat with the lucky Warriors picked to participate.

A few did defeat their jailers, but then were forced to immediately fight the next in line, and only the Gorn made it past more then two opponents. She was finally brought down by a huge seven foot Klingon, Martok's _cha'Dlch_, and he held the decapitated saurian's head high, to the roar of the crowd.

Ezri stood beside Marla, at the edge of the dais, the two watching the massacre. She glanced at Marla as a tear ran down her cheek. The pale Terran wiped at her eyes, "What a terrible waste of life, this vile Alliance cannot continue."

Ezri turned back to the arena and her stomach twisted in apprehension, for the guards were marching straight for their enclosure. The women stepped back as one of the Warriors hit the release switch, and glared at the occupants.

His gaze came to rest on the cowering pack of wolf-headed aliens, "The Breen! You're next."

The aliens screeched mechanically in fear, but there was nothing they could do, and the Klingons led them out, prodding with painsticks to keep them moving. One remained for a moment and grasped Captain Ransom's arm in a sign of respect. The two locked eyes, and Ransom nodded at the furred creature, then the Klingon's pulled it away, and resealed the pen.

Ransom watched for a long moment, then turned back to the waiting Max and Noah, "Now?" asked the impatient Max, but Noah shook his head.

Ezri watched in horrified fascination as the Regent's private corps faced off in hand-to-hand with the Breen. The battle was brutal and bloody, for both sides, but in the end only Klingons stood on the field.

Pakled slaves hurried in and dragged the corpses off, as the Warriors on the field howled the Klingon Death Ritual for their fallen comrades. The squad of guards left the field, bound for Ezri's pen again. She glanced back at the four Terrans to warn them, and saw them peering down at Noah Lessing's wrist. She narrowed her eyes, what were they up to?

"Ransom!" called Marla Gilmore, and they looked up in alarm.

Ransom moved quickly to stand by Ezri, and they stared at each other, both aware that this was it.

"Tigan, I, uh..." he stammered, and Ezri's eyes went wide, he was nervous!

"Rudy, I want to say-" she whispered, and then her emotions over came her and she grabbed him around the neck and kissed him fiercely.

Shocked, he hesitated only a moment, then hugged her to him, returning her embrace. For a long moment, nearly half a minute, the universe around Ezri vanished, and she knew nothing but Rudy's strong arms encapsulating her, the feel of his firm body against her lithe and petite one.

Then she was pulled away from him, and dragged from the pen. The force field snapped back on, Ransom smashed his fists against it, and roared his fury to the heavens all around them.

The last thing the Trill saw, before the guards whirled her around, was Rudy's face with her tears sparkling on his cheeks. Marla had an arm around his shoulders, trying to pull him away. But the Olympian Captain had become a statue, his eyes locked with Ezri's.

She was led to the battle circle closest to the Regent's row. They left her standing there, and she stood staring proudly up at the crowd.

The richly cloaked Klingon in the center regarded her quizzically, and to her suprise, she saw, like Kragg he was also short an eye, "This is the _nuch_ who sabotaged the _Bok'ra,_ killed more then ten Klingon Warriors and took the eye and nearly the arm of Kragg?" demanded Martok.

"I'll add your remaining eye to my collection, you old bastard, just come down here!" growled Ezri, and the crowd was silent.

The new Regent stared down at the defiant Trill in amazement, then laughed, long and hard, and the crowd cheered.

"Excellent! Where is Kragg? This will be the highlight of my day." he said once the crowd quieted again.

"I am HERE!" came the familiar voice from the garrison, and Ezri turned to regard her nemesis striding into the arena.

Kragg only had 'eyes' for her, and he glared with his one good one at Ezri, as he came to stand in the ring.

"Then let it _begin_!" ordered the Regent, and the crowd roared it's approval.

Guards came forward and pulled the armor from Kragg, stripping him to the waist. He now wore only leather pants and studded boots. Then a Klingon ran up to Ezri and asked her choice of weapons.

She selected a sturdy looking _bat'leth_, while Kragg grabbed his personal _mek'leth_ from the hands of his Man-at-Arms.

They stood ready, Kragg shaking with anticipation, Ezri grasping the curved sword like the lifeline it was, attempting to reign in the fear that now boiled in her stomach.

"Captain Kragg!" shouted Martok from the stands, "Why do you call this _be'_ out? She is not of an enslaved race." all part of the ritual.

"I demand _bortaS Dib_, the Right of Vengeance!" he shouted back.

"So be it!" replied the Regent, the crowd roared, Kragg howled a battle cry and charged Ezri!

That did it, the Trill's fear dropped away and a sense of serene calmness settled in place of it. She slipped into the battle training that had been engrained into her, from her run with the mercs.

Swinging her _bat'leth_ back, she ducked under Kragg's moving slash, came up behind him and hacked upwards.

But he was ready for this, twisting around and blocking her blade. Thier weapons met with a loud CLANG! and sparks flew.

"You are strong, witch, stronger then you look." snarled Kragg, his fetid breath smelling of bloodwine.

Ezri only stared back, her face impassive, her mind running through the _bat'leth_ moves she hadn't practiced for nearly four years, then suddenly whirled away, then back, and planted a foot into Kragg's side, sending him stumbling forward and to the right.

The crowd roared at her deftness, and Kragg went down on one knee to catch himself from falling. Ezri was on him like lightning, but he fought off her blows, his superior strength too much for her, and he rose.

Their blocks and slashes came faster now, and the crowd yelled it's approval. In the stands, Martok nodded his appreciation, the girl was good, maybe as good as Kragg.

Back at the pen, Marla and Rudy stared in concentration at the intense duel. Behind them Noah gave a yelp as a bleep seemed to come from nowhere. Ransom and Max spun around in time to see the young man tear at the skin of his right wrist.

The fake flesh tore away to reveal a wafer-thin band of technology, and Noah read from the tiny display screen, "That's the signal, they're coming!"

"Let's go then." ordered Ransom, and they strode to the side of the pen.

Max tore synthetic skin from his wrist to reveal a similar device to Noah's. He stepped up to the force field, took a deep breath, then plunged his fist into the field.

Yellow sparks flew and energy crawled down his arm, standing his hair on end. But most of it was absorbed by the device. Even though, he began to scream, it was agony.

But the band began to glow red, and they all covered their eyes as it flared and this part of the field shorted out. It had worked, Marla's inventions usually did.

They stepped through, Max tearing the now charred device from his battered and burned wrist, "Yeowch! You never said that would hurt so much, Marla!"

"Stow it." ordered Ransom, and they ran down the tarmac behind the stands, the great hall that served the asteroid as an HQ, looming ahead.

Their timing was perfect, all eyes were on the spectacle in the arena, and they met no resistance. Max and Noah disappeared inside the hall, but Ransom stopped and looked back to the arena. Ezri Tigan was a distant figure, her weapon singing and clicking as she fought off the Klingon brute.

"Rudy..." said Marla, and he nodded, and the two entered the building.

Ezri blocked a wicked upper thrust, then a down slash, looking for an opening that would not come. _He's playing with me, wearing me down, and it's working_, she moaned to herself, her muscles were aching.

Then it happened, she slipped on a patch of green blood, that was pooled on the arena floor, and nearly lost her footing.

Kragg howled in excitement and slashed forward with his smaller _mek'leth_, knocking her weapon back, and slashed Ezri's left shoulder open to the bone, she screamed!

He danced away, as the crowd roared at the sight of first blood, then he spun around in a flash and charged her.

Ezri, now with only one working arm, did the only thing she could think of, she swung back and hurled the now useless weapon at Kragg, with all her strength.

He had not anticipated this, and he tried to dodge out of the way and bring up his short sword to block, but his momentum was too much. Ezri's sword flew under his and sunk into his side.

His weapon fell from his hands and clattered away, as he dropped to one knee.

Ezri grasped her torn shoulder, blood gushing out, and tried to block out the pain with the Vulcan mental techniques she had learned. She watched as Kragg gasped and coughed up blood, his eye wild with shock and pain.

"You..._petaQ_!" he gasped, then grabbing hold of the _bat'leth_ he wrenched with all his might, and it actually snapped off at the point where it was imbeded so deep, it had caught tightly between his ribs.

He got to his feet, grasped his new sword with both hands and smiled at her.

Ezri had used the momentary pause in the duel well, and her ripped open shoulder was a distant ache, the blood flow actually stopped, thanks to full use of the Vulcan bio-control technique.

"_Hab SoSlI' Quch_!" she yelled at Kragg, and gasps came from the crowd at this most vile of Klingon insults.

"Trill slut!" Kragg roared back, he was enraged, and she smiled back at him, and showed her teeth.

The blood loss had turned her skin very pale, and her spots stood out like vile tattoos, depicting her disgust with the one-eyed Klingon as if in pictograms. She paused, then summoned to her lips the worst thing a Klingon could be called.

"_RomuluSngan_!" she taunted in a perfect Klingon accent.

The universe as Kragg knew it collapsed into a red haze of blinding hatred. Hatred for the fellow warriors who now laughed at him from the stands, hatred for the wound in his side, a sign of weakness, and most importantly hatred for this fowl spawn of _Fek'lhr_. He screamed and ran at her, weapon raised.

Ezri just stood her ground, still as a mountain, as the towering warrior tore across the field toward her, mouth cast so wide in rage that it split on both sides, spraying tiny mists of blood.

12 meters, 10 meters, 7, 5, 4, and Ezri's good right arm flashed behind her, pulled the knife, that she had taken from the guard she killed back in the _Bok'ra'_s brig, from it's hiding place in her trousers.

She ducked and stabbed forward, almost fast enough to get under the hurtling _bat'leth_, but it caught her in the face and knocked her over and back, sending her twisting to the tarmac, her right eye socket shattering outwards, spraying a stream of blood, bone and scrambled eyeball , high into the air.

She collapsed there, unmoving, and Kragg roared his triumph to the crowd, holding the broken and bloody sword in the air with both hands, as he stood over her.

But the screaming adulation he was expecting did not come. All were silent, and his eye darted in confusion at a world gone insane.

His gaze fell on Martok, and the Regent gestured downwards. Kragg slowly looked down, and for the first time saw the dagger, barbs extended, buried to the hilt, in his chest.

...for a long moment nothing happened, then...

"..._qoS toma 'epaq qaver_..."Kragg moaned, and fell backwards, and to all in the arena, it was if in slow motion, as his lifeless body impacted with the tarmac, and no one spoke.

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

In the Great Hall Ransom and company had found the Ty'Gokor operations room, and it wasn't as empty as they thought. Ransom gave hand signals for Gilmore and Lessing to hold back.

Three Klingon technicians looked up in shock from the arena display they were clustered around, as the two Terrans charged in to the massive darkened room, usually staffed by more then fifty men.

The humans had found a weapons locker and Noah's wrist unit had made short work of the lock. Max brandished twin disrupter rifles and howled as he opened up on the scrambling Klingons.

One Klingon's head vanished from the eyes up and he toppled over a railing to fall three stories into the hall's computer core. The other two were faster, and were behind consoles, crouching and firing back.

Ransom dashed forward and threw a fusion grenade, then dropped to the floor and covered his head. The projectile blew and shattered half the screens in the room, catching a technician in the back with flying glass and metal. He hung pinned to the console, dead.

Max exhausted the rifles power supply and dropped them, drawing twin pistols. He laid down fire on the desk the remaining Klingon was behind, then charged.

The Klingon suddenly stood, taking two blasts in the chest, but he fired at the same time, and sent Max flying backwards, into the wall. The technician dropped dead, and Marla ran into the room, saw Max, and ran to him.

Ransom got up and walked over to look down at the man that she cradled, "He's dead, Marla, come on, we have little time, if none." he said very softly.

She nodded and got up slowly, laying Max's head carefully on the floor. She reached down and brushed his eyes shut, then with one last look at his handsome features, she strode to the main console.

She activated the Tactical display, and a holoprojector rose from the center of the floor and lit up. A 3D image of the Ty'Gokor System appeared, with the asteroid they were on in the center. Ransom read the readout and counted nearly three hundred Klingon vessels in orbit of them, "Noah, upload this to the _Sisko_." he ordered.

Lessing complied. He connected a cable from the console to his wrist gauntlet, and transmitted, "Done sir!"

Ransom counted slowly to sixty, then nodded, "That should be enough time for them to get into position. Marla, activate the asteroid's weapons package."

"Aye, sir!" and she tapped the key sequence that would bring the eighty disruptor batteries online.

Noah ran for the door and hit it's controls, then locked them as they shut tight. He fired his pistol into the mechanism, fusing the controls.

Outside the Hall HQ, in the stands, the crowd howled as one, warning the dead that two noble spirits were on their way to the halls of _Sto-Vo-Kor_. Martok stood to signal to the slaves to get rid of the empty husks, but his ears detected the distant battle alarms.

All through the stands growls of confusion echoed, and then a massive hum filled the surface of the asteroid. All knew it could only be only thing: the batteries were coming on, they must be under attack!

Martok roared orders to all his Generals, and they in turn order all Warriors to their ships. A thousand comlinks came on and ordered beam-up, but nothing happened. Eyes flipped spacewards and they saw that the asteroid's force field had changed, it was now at full strength.

No transporter could work through that.

Then truly, _Gre'thor_ came to Ty'Gokor, for the heavens above swirled and twisted and a fleet of Rebel starships appeared, as if from nowhere. Each was perfectly positioned to fire on a Klingon vessel, and they instantly did so.

Martok roared in fury as his fleet was blown to bits, ship-by-ship. They all were manned by skeleton crews, and so were slow to respond. Then Ty'Gokor's disruptor's opened fire, raining green death upon the remaining Klingon ships. Not one beam so much as touched a rebel ship, not even the massive _Regency I_, the massive captured Alliance flagship. Worf had called it the _Negh'Var_, but now it had a new name scrawled in white across it's bow: _RSS Sisko_, in honor of the Rebel's fallen founder.

The battle was over almost before it started, with only three ships lost on the Rebel's side, out of the more then a hundred that made up the fleet. All but a few of the Klingon ships had been pulverized, and the ones that were left were in no position to attack, sparking and listing.

From the operations room, Ransom ordered the shield strength lowered enough to allow transport, and he signaled his ship, the_ RSS Equinox_, a heavily-modified Constitution-Class Imperial battleship, rescued by him and Max from an Alliance junkyard. His communications officer, Gill Adams, answered, "Aye sir!"

"Three to beam up, now!" and as the doors to the Ops room blew inwards, spilling maddened Klingons inside, the three Terrans vanished in a swirl of energy.

Ransom appeared and stepped off the pad, nodded thanks to the Vulcan operator, "Scan for a Trill life sign on the asteroid, now!"

The Vulcan's fingers flew, and he nodded, "Energize!" demanded the estatic Captain, then he called to the open wall comlink, "Bridge, target the hall and destroy it!"

A full spread of photon torpedoes shot from the _Equinox_ and slammed into the huge stone building. It blew to bits in a rapidly expanding sphere of burning blue energy, which engulfed the milling warriors.

The disruptor batteries on the surface, just beginning to swivel into position to fire upon the Rebel fleet, all froze. Then the _Sisko_ opened up with it's weaponry, and the rest of the fleet followed suit. The asteroid flared brightly then imploded, most of it disintegrated by the combined energy.

All Rebel vessels had their shields up, and the massive concussion did little damage, only blinded their sensors for a few moments. The _Equinox_'s shields were the last to flash up, but just before they did, a hum filled the transporter room.

Marla, Noah and Rudy looked up from their crouch on the transporter pad, looking for lifesigns from Ezri, to see two Klingon warriors, one with his disruptor out, the other carrying a duffel bag, appear in the middle of the room.

"No one MOVE!" the armed one shouted, but the Vulcan lunged for him, and the armed Klingon whirled and fired.

The transporter operator vanished in a flare of energy, and the Klingon spun back to face the three crouched humans.

"...Marl, isn't it." said Captain Ransom, rising, arms spread, for he, like the other Terrans, had left his weapons back in the Operations room.

"Correct. I don't care who you are, the one I want is _her_." and he pointed his weapon at the prone Trill, "Step away from her, this is all her fault!"

Marla and Noah glanced at Ransom and he nodded. They stood and stepped off the pad. Ransom instead stepped between Ezri and Marl, "Let's discuss this- "

"Fine, you die first, then the Trill!" and Marl swung the pistol to point at Ransom, who closed his eyes, nothing would make him move away from Ezri.

But before the Science Officer could thumb the trigger, the other Klingon, so still to this point, suddenly whirled and pushed Marl! He fired and the beam shot past Ransoms's head by a few centimeters. Marl tumbled, and fell to his knees on the floor.

The renegade Klingon's hand stretched like taffy and grabbed the weapon from his loose fingers.

"YOU!" shouted the Klingon, and his betrayer smiled and morphed into his Swire form, complete with a Starfleet uniform.

"Surprise." the shapeshifter said dryly, and he crushed the gun into powder in his hands.

"L-Loth...is that... you?" came the weak voice of Ezri, and she slowly sat up, gazing stupidly around the room.

Her face was a horrid mess, and with her one good eye she riveted on Marl, who laughed heartily, "Justice! You look like Kragg now, whore!"

Despite her mangled features, all in the room could see the livid expression on Ezri Tigan's face, "I see you're not in Klingon Hell yet." she snarled at the Klingon.

"But you all soon will be!" and Marl pulled a disruptor from inside his armor and blasted Loth, Ransom, then Noah with it.

All three collapsed, stunned, and Marl glanced down at it in confusion, "Wha-I never set my weapons on stun?"

"Thats because it's not your weapon, pig, it's mine!" said Ezri with a mad smile, "And like all my stuff, it's uniquely mine. ALPHA-GAMMA!" she commanded.

"Alpha what?" asked Marl, as Ezri's pistol registered her voice and code then overloaded.

It and the Klingon vanished in a flare of disrupter energy.

"Yes!" roared Marla, and she slapped the wall comlink, "Medical team to the Transporter room!"

Ezri smiled, tried to stand, and fell on her face.

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

_ Two days later at _Terok Nor_, Terran Rebellion HQ..._

Miles "Smiley" O'Brien stood gazing out at the star field past the planet Bajor. The Rebel fleet hung either in space nearby or floated in orbit. The _RSS Equinox_ lay docked to _Terok Nor_, and he was still amazed at the relic from his cultural past.

Only one other ship was currently docked at the station, and it was it's departure he was waiting for.

At the airlock that led to the small Cardassian shuttle, Ezri Tigan embraced the changeling she had to thank for saving Rudy Ransom's life. And for the lives of all the crew of the _Equinox _too, most likely.

His tale of escaping from the lab during the Rebel attack, and his subsequent flight through the buckling ship to escape with the unknowing Marl had amazed her. And to add to it all, he had taken the time to rescue the Dax symbiont from the ship's cargo bay. Truly incredible.

"Are you sure you won't reconsider and come with us to Olympia Prime?" Ezri asked, the tears now falling down her cheeks.

Loth reached up and tenderly brushed them away, then ran a finger along the thin scar that ran from her temple to her newly restored eye socket. An artificial eye, identical to her lost one, and almost as good, gazed back with it's twin at him.

"I wish I could, but my path leads to my people here, maybe they're not like those back in the other Universe. I have to take the chance." he said, and she nodded.

He smiled and stepped through the airlock and into his new ship. She departed for the Promenade.

Ezri came to stand by O'Brien, and the two of them watched as the shuttle shot away from the station. Ezri pulled the padd from her jacket pocket and turned it on.

She held it up so both she and O'Brien could see, "This is a direct feed from Loth's forward scanners?" asked the leader of the rebellion.

"Yeah, but once he's in, the contact will break." she replied and the image of space on the padd shifted and a blue and purple wormhole exploded into being for a moment, and the shuttle dropped into it.

"Wow! And this leads to another quadrant of space?" asked the amazed man, and Ezri nodded.

"Well, I'm off. Thanks for everything, Smiley." she said and grasped his shoulder.

"Thank Captain Ransom again, if he hadn't appeared out of nowhere with his ship and his plan, we'd of foolishly attacked Cardassia Prime." said O'Brien, "Cloaked fleet or not, I think it might have been the end of the Terran Rebellion."

"United Rebellion." suggested Ezri, and the Irishman smiled as she walked away.

Ezri stepped from the turbolift onto the bridge of the _Equinox_, "Permission to come aboard, sir?" she saluted.

Rudy whirled, and grabbed her by the waist and spun her in the air, then caught her in a tight embrace.

He kissed her, and Noah smiled from the navigation console.

He broke from her, them both smiling and gasping, "My new First Officer doesn't need permission to come aboard." he said, and smiled one of his rare grins.

Ezri smiled back, "Lets go to Olympia Prime, I really want to see it."

Ransom sat down in the boxy command chair, "It's seven weeks to get there at Maximum Warp, you sure you're up to it?"

"Oh, I think we can find something to do to kill the time." she said and ran her fingers through his wavy hair.

"Rudy, you do know she's young enough to be your-" Noah began to tease, but was interrupted by the whistle from the comm.

"_Gilmore to Bridge, engines ready!_" came the call of the Chief Engineer.

"Detach from _Terok Nor_." ordered Ransom, "And send my compliments to every ship in the fleet."

"Aye, Captain." replied Gill Adams from behind them, at Communications.

The _Equinox_ dropped away from the station, and shot forward, threading it's way through the other ships. It exited the system and went to full Impulse.

"Where to?" asked Noah from his console.

"Trill, to drop off the symbiont, then on to Olympia." ordered Ezri, before Ransom could even speak.

He looked at her as if to say, are you sure?, and she nodded.

Things hadn't turned out the way she had expected, but Ezri was used to that by now. She had set out to find a piece of herself that she was sure was missing, and she had. With Rudy, Marla, and Noah, and this ship.

She would take Dax home, for the symbiont was meant to be someone else's destiny, then go onwards and upwards toward her own.

Ezri smiled, and the _Equinox_ leaped to the stars...

**To be continued...**


	7. Chapter VII

**Chapter VII - Beyond Oblivion**

_ Deep inside the Mirror Universe...  
_  
She stood on a desert plain, yellow blowing sand in all directions, and gazed with disdain at the decimated wasteland that had once been a lush and green arboreal world. Millions of different species had inhabited it in it's prime, with her race supreme at the top of the food chain.

Now it was all gone, destroyed by the actions of one being, sent by his race on a mission of conquest. But fate has a way of returning the favor in ways that are unimaginable. And she would be the instrument of her planet's revenge. The signal came and she sent her response, then vanished in the light of a transporter beam.

And so it began...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

_ 138 light-years outside the Alliance Quadrant...  
_  
The _RSS Equinox_ sailed through warp space bound for her home, Olympia Prime. Like an eagle lazily gliding to it's nest, the refurbished battle cruiser flew onwards at a leisurely Warp 6. It's white shell glistened and it's newly added red-and-black stripes blazed down the sides of the hulls and warp nacelles, giving her the appearance of a racing cutter.

On the brightly lit Bridge, Rudolf Ransom sat in his boxy Captain's chair and drank his morning coffee, while skimming through the list of fleet upgrades he was planning to suggest when they returned home. At the Helm, Lt. Noah Lessing leaned back in his chair and yawned.

Ransom looked up, "Long night, Mr. Lessing?"

Startled, Lessing sat up straight, then looked around sheepishly, "Uh, yes sir, the First Officer and I were up late making some, uh, adjustments."

Ransom leaned forward, intrigued. He knew Tigan was up to something, but she wouldn't say, she would just give him her innocent "cat that just ate your pet tribble" grin, "Adjustments to what, Helmsman?"

"Well, I'm not really supposed to say, sir. I, um, you see...uh..." stammered the nervous Terran.

"Mr. Lessing, this is my ship and I demand-" began the Captain, but the whistle of the comm cut him off.

"_Now hear this, now hear this, damn I sound lame_." Ransom winced at the sarcastic voice of the Trill he had made his second in command, "_Uh, yeah, all right Marla, let me do it! Now hear this, all Senior Officers report to get the Conference Room on Deck 4. That will be all. See I told you-what? Oh, the red button shut's the channel off, not the green one? Well, why didn't you just-_"

And with that the announcement was cut. Ransom, Lessing and Gill Adams from communications stood and headed to the main turbolift. Ransom paused to glare at Ensign Tracy, who was attempting, and failing badly, not to laugh, "Ensign, you have the Bridge." he said, and she quickly got up from her seat at Environmental and assumed her new post.

As the doors to the lift slid shut, Ransom closed his eyes and swore a silent oath. That Trill had the best tactical and command instincts he had ever encountered, and she stood unwavering in the face of any opposition. As well, the entire crew respected and liked her. But she was undisciplined and ignorant of required shipboard decorum, almost like she was doing it on purpose. It had been a bizarre month and a half.

Then there was the added problem that she was sleeping with her commanding officer. Ransom frowned at himself, how wise was this? _What if I fall in love with her, how will that affect my command? And what if I already have..._

The lift door slid open and the three men strode across and entered the newly painted Conference Room. The bright and contrasting Imperial colors from a century before had been giving the crew headaches, Ransom included. Now it was all replaced with soothing grays and teals, with a plant or salvaged piece of art here and there, all thanks to their Communications Officer, a closet interior designer.

Adams, the decorator himself, had hung a fascinating painting in Ransom's office, more then three centuries old. Here in the conference room a fern sat in one corner, while a strange artifact, large, like an old fashioned computer console, yet oddly shaped, all glass and black metal, stood against the far wall.

_Well, I'm no art expert_, thought the commander, as he sat down sat down.

The three men were the only ones in the room and Ransom fumed. Lessing gazed around the room and his eyes alighted on the strange object that had previously caught his Captain's interest, "Hey Gill, where did you find that?"

Adams beamed proudly, "Got it off a trader back on _Terok Nor_, isn't it great! He didn't even know what he had, and it's still operational, though I had to disable the credit feed."

"What is it, an old Vulcan hemotype analyzer?" asked Noah.

"What? No. It's something they used to be called 'Pac-Man'. I think it was a religious totem of some kind, so-" but he was interrupted before he could finish by the two arguing women who burst into the room.

"I don't care if you need that conduit, just reroute the ISDN interface through another path-" broke off Commander Ezri Tigan, the petite and striking young Trill Officer, as she saw that they had been beaten to the meeting, "Oh, hi Rudy, sorry, well we're here now, I guess that's what matters." she slipped into her chair opposite Ransom, who folded his arms and gazed at the ceiling.

Elegant and austere Chief Engineer Marla Gilmore, she of the pale skin and long blond hair, sat down and pulled a padd from her short black uniform coat, and began to scan through her notes.

"I was going to call the meeting after lunch, Commander." said Ransom.

"I know, I know, but I'm ready now, and I have a surprise, and-" rambled Ezri, then stopped, as the conference room doors popped open to admit a female Ensign, caring a strange device that Ransom didn't recognize.

The young Terran woman glanced at the assembled Officers, then went to the corner of the room and placed the device on the floor. She flipped it on with a switch on it's side, then took a seat.

Ransom glanced at Ezri for an explanation, but she gave him that naughty smile again. He glanced at Marla, but she looked away, no help there.

"Okay then, if the First Officer thinks now is the time, lets get to business." gave in Ransom, "Status of the_ Equinox_?"

"Warp Core is running at maximum efficiency, all ships systems at 98 percent or better." stated Gilmore.

"Weapons and shields have been tested and adjusted, the new Cardassian phaser banks are ready for use. Not that I want to use them, though." reported Lessing.

"Communications are optimized, all new Rebellion and Alliance protocols have been integrated." said Lt. Gill Adams, and Ransom nodded.

"Commander, have you finished the new crew assignments?" asked the Captain, and he mentally crossed his fingers, she had been stalling, but this was her first administration job, so...

"Aye, aye, Captain-my-Captain." Ezri Tigan beamed and produced a padd of her own, she scanned it, "We now have a complement of eighty-seven, and I have reassigned 30 percent of the crew, plus assigned the new personnel that we took on at _Terok Nor_."

She paused to catch her breath, then continued, "Among the Command Crew, I have evaluated everyone, and found all to be competent and capable. For the now vacant positions, I have made the following decisions : Lt. Gill Adams, I've talked to the Captain, and we're agreed, you are now the new Second Officer, complete with a promotion to Lt. Commander."

"Yes!" the brown haired and goateed Terran slapped the table in excitement, and then shook the proffered hand of his best friend Noah, who smiled back, "Thank you Commander, Captain, I won't let you down!"

Ransom smiled, "You are still assigned to Communications, you're the best man for the post." and Adams nodded.

"Everyone has met our new Science Officer, whom I stole from _Terok Nor_." said Ezri and gestured to the slim brunette Terran who had arrived last, "That is permanent as of now, and you too are promoted, to the rank of Lieutenant, junior grade. Congratulations, Eleanor."

The woman grinned and nodded slightly, there was scattered applause.

"So that leaves us fully staffed, the automation upgrades on the _Equinox_ are complete, and our crew number is exactly what this ship requires now." stated Tigan.

"Except for the position of Chief Medical Officer, we'll have to look for someone back on Olympia." interjected the Captain, but Ezri's eyes lit up.

"Actually, I think I may have that covered, Rudy, are we ready Marla, Eleanor ?" she asked, and they nodded, "Great, then without further adieu, Computer...activate Emergency Medical Hologram!"

There was a hum and a flash of light beside Ransom, and a Terran appeared. He had curly blond hair, pinched features, and wore a Starfleet uniform from the other Universe.

He stared around himself in annoyment and said to the room at large, "Please state the nature of the medical emergency."

"What...is...this?" said Ransom very slowly, almost a hiss.

Oblivious to Ransom's tone, Ezri marched on in excitement, "I had the opportunity to come across this during one of my excursions to the other side, it was in the databank of a Starfleet ship I, uh, hitched a ride on. I didn't know what use it might be, but I took it anyway, as well as the schematics for the needed holo-emitters. It's installed and ready in the Sickbay, Engineering and the Mess hall. And soon it will be able to project everywhere on the...what?"

The Captain had reached out, grabbed the arm of the Hologram, and turned it over, examining it in annoyment. The Hologram glared and pulled away, "Unhand me! Everyone seems healthy here, why did you summon me?" it asked.

"You expect us to be treated by a trick of light?" asked Ransom.

"This 'trick of light' is a skilled Starfleet medical program, fully able to handle whatever situation comes up, Rudy." shot back Ezri.

"So they're on every ship in their fleet?" he asked.

"Uh, well, no, but there was problems with the first version, so they-" she began.

"Problems? So you brought it here? You've given the _Equinox_ a discarded program?" replied the Captain.

"Discarded? Now wait a minute, I'm a-" began the Hologram, but Ezri called for mute, and he continued his tirade in silence.

"This is the EMH Mark 2, the improvement, all problems fixed. They just decided not to go ahead with installation, kind of a waste. You don't see me complaining being First Officer on a hundred year-old recycled battle cruiser, do you?" Ezri was starting to get angry.

"If it was never installed, how do we know it won't-" continued Ransom, but the whistle of the comm interrupted him.

"_Bridge to Ransom_." came Ensign Tracy's voice.

"Ransom here, go ahead." replied Rudy.

"Captain, we are picking up a distress call a quarter light-year out of our way." she replied.

Rudy thought for a moment, then ordered, "Alter course to intercept, we're on our way to the Bridge."

He got up, "Meeting adjourned. Everyone, to your stations. And turn that thing off."

The new Lieutenant and Science Officer scrambled up and gave the order. The EMH2 vanished in mid silent oration. Everyone filed out.

Twenty minutes later the _Equinox_ dropped from Warp and into real space. Directly ahead lay a small listing scout ship, it's green hull burned and scarred. It was venting a cloud of plasma from it's rear-mounted engines, and crackled with energy discharges.

On the Bridge, Lessing activated controls on his combination Helm and Navicom Station, taken from a Klingon freighter, and the ship came to a stop, five thousand kilometers off from the damaged vessel. "All stop, as ordered sir." announced the helmsman.

"What's their status?" asked Ransom.

"Scanning, sir, coil radiation is making things difficult, I can't tell if anyone is alive aboard her." said the Science Officer.

"The distress call is on automatic repeat." interjected Adams from communications, "Hull registry reads her to be the _Daknoor_, a Talarian mining Scout."

"Is there still an atmosphere?" asked Ransom, swiveling to face Eleanor, and she nodded.

"I'm going over there. Lessing, Adams, you're with me." said Tigan, and she headed for the lift.

Ransom glanced at her as she stepped aboard and turned back to face the Bridge, waiting for the others. Her eyes met his and she nodded, knowing what was on his mind. _She knows to be careful, she knows I wouldn't let her go if she wasn't_, thought Ransom, and the doors closed, whisking them away.

The three crewman appeared on the Bridge of the Daknoor, disruptors out, but there was no immediate threat. Lessing holstered his weapon, and drew his tricorder, "I'm getting a better reading from here, only one life form, over there." he pointed to the Helm, where a figure lay across it, unmoving.

Ezri gestured for Lessing to check the Scout's status, and she and Adams picked their way through the dead bodies on the floor, to the Helm. Adams scanned the humanoid male and judging it safe, pulled him into a sitting position. He drew a hypo from his belt kit, adjusted it, then injected the humanoid in the neck.

He came awake, rubbed at his bruised head ridges, then glanced around in surprise, and reached for his pistol on the console in front of him. Ezri was much faster, and she had her disruptor pointed between his eyes, "I wouldn't. Really." she said, her voice made of steel.

He glanced between the two figures, then nodded, and pulled his hand back, "Sorry, you heard our signal?"

Ezri nodded, knocked his weapon away and holstered her own, but kept a hand on the weapon's butt, "Yeah, you have an accident, or what? You're the only one left alive."

"No, we were attacked, there was a strange reading and then we lost all systems. We came back online and these two ships were suddenly there, no warning of Warp exit, nothing. They opened up on us, then boarded!" he stammered, as Adams scanned him for internal injuries.

Ezri glanced at Lessing, "Whats happening, Noah?"

"This ship's going go up in less then two minutes, we got to go." he replied, and she nodded, slapping her star-shaped combadge.

"Tigan to Ransom, this ship is going nova very soon, four to beam out in thirty seconds." she transmitted, then looked back at the Talarian, who had gotten to his feet, "You need to get anything you want to take with you fast, we've got to go."

He shook his head, he had nothing, and she turned to talk to Gill, but he was kneeling by the viewscreen, scanning a huddled form, "Commander, you should see this!"

"No time, bring it with us." she ordered, and sent the beam-out correction to the transporter room.

Less then a minute later the _Equinox_ turned 180 degrees and leaped to Full Impulse. Behind them the quadruple finned Scout ship exploded in a flash of burning plasma.

Ezri exited the transporter room, escorting the Talarian, "I'll take you to our Sickbay, our doctor can check you over."

Adams and Lessing followed them out, caring the body Adams had found on the bridge. Ezri paused, turning back, "Is this the species who attacked you?" she asked, and their guest nodded, "I've never seen this race before, bring it to Sickbay, boys, I want the EMH2 to analyze it."

Ten minutes later Ransom strode through the doors into the_ Equinox_'s clinic and found Ezri talking to the tall dark-bearded Talarian officer, while two other of his Bridge crew stood with the EMH2 at the far biobed, "Welcome aboard, Mr..."

"Commander Luthrun, Tash Luthrun." replied the Talarian, "You have my thanks, Captain, if not for you-"

Ransom waived the praise away, "It's nothing your people would not do for us. You are from the colony on Sullus VII, right?" and Luthrun nodded.

"I'll adjust our course to take you there, it's on our way. So, you were attacked. By whom?" asked the Terran Captain.

"That's where this gets interesting, Rudy, see what Gill found." said Ezri, and they walked over to the biobed.

The EMH2 was playing a scanner over the broken and stabbed body. Ransom gazed with interest at the mysterious humanoid, "I've never seen this species before. Looks kind of like a thin Klingon."

"A Klingon having an extremely bad hair day." quipped Gill, and Noah nodded.

"If I may speak now..." began the EMH2 with an arrogant tone.

"Not now." snapped Ransom, turning to Ezri, "Is there anybody aboard qualified to act as Doctor until we reach Olympia?"

"Yeah, him!" said the Trill, gesturing to the Hologram, "Look Rudy, I don't know what your problem is, this program is fully capable to fill the position, and he could teach whatever doctors you have on Olympia a thing or two!"

"This is _my_ ship, and as such I get final say on any new technology. I think this is an extremely bad idea, it's experimental-" said Ransom angrily, but the Hologram got between the two of them, cutting the Captain off.

"SILENCE!" he shouted, and all became still, "This is _my_ Sickbay, no matter how primitive it is, at least for now! Now, if you want to argue, go elsewhere, as I have an analysis to do, and I have to start scheduling crew physicals. Do you want to be first, Captain?"

Ransom's mouth opened, but he didn't say anything, then he shut it. He looked at the Hologram, then considered the glare that the EMH2 returned at him, unwavering.

He took a breath, then spoke, "All right. You think you can do the job, fine. Prove it. What can you tell me about this body."

The EMH2 smiled confidently, then turned back to the biobed, "That's a simple one, Captain, I know everything there is to know about this species. It's racial statistics are a part of my exobiology database."

"It's been encountered in your Universe?" asked Ezri.

"My Universe? What are you talking about?" asked the confused Hologram.

"Not know, I'll explain later, tell us about the alien." she ordered.

The EMH2 gave her a strange look, then continued "First encountered on Stardate 48315.7, by the Federation starship _Voyager_. Native to the Delta Quadrant, they are a nomadic, violent species, underdeveloped, but capable of grasping current technology. Known as the Kazon, this emblem here indicates this man was part of the Kazon-Nistrim sect. The metabolism and blood work is indicative of-"

"Enough, Doctor." interrupted Ransom, "Well, if they are native to the other Universe's Delta Quadrant, then they would hail from our own equivalent. So what the hell is he doing here, attacking Talarians?"

No answer was forth coming from anyone in the room. Ransom opened his mouth to issue new orders, when suddenly there was a flash of light, and the ship shook. Without hesitation the Captain shot to the nearest comm panel, "Ransom to Bridge, what was that?"

The Science Officer's voice issued from the comlink on the wall "_Unknown sir, it seemed as if we passed through some sort of energy beam_."

"Source?" he demanded.

"_Also unknown. Wait a moment..._"

Up on the Bridge, Eleanor's eyes went wide at her readouts, "Captain, I'm reading a massive displacement wave, heading right for us! ETA twenty seconds!"

"Captain, this is what happened just before the other ships appeared, you will be disabled!" informed the Talarian to the rest down in Sickbay.

"Tigan to Bridge, raise shields, full power!" the Trill ordered, "First Officer to all hands, go to Red Alert and brace for impact!"

The _Equinox_ turned to face the coming spacial disruption and it hit the vessel hard, tossing her like a sailing ship upon a tidal wave. Then they were in it, shields flaring at full power, then they were through.

In Sickbay, Ezri and Rudy lay on the floor, arms clasped around each other. Ransom's back ached from where he'd hit the wall, and Ezri bled from her forehead, the drops dripping past her spots and onto his black syntheleather uniform jacket. "Are you okay?" he asked.

Ezri nodded, and kissed him lightly on the lips, "Are you?" she whispered and he nodded back, "Then let's get back to work."

They disengaged and stood. Lessing, Gill, and the Talarian had managed to stay on their feet, and the EMH2 seemed unperturbed. Ransom headed for the door, and the rest were behind him.

"_Uh, Captain, you better get up here._" came the shaky voice of the Science Officer over the comlink, as they headed down the corridor.

They stepped into the lift and Luthrun turned to Tigan, "What type of ship is this, I've never seen it's configuration before."

"Constitution." she replied, holding the compress the doctor had given her to her head wound, "It was rebuilt with parts from two other salvaged Imperial battle cruisers, and augmented with a variety of current technology."

"Good, then you should be better able to stand up to the two vessels that attacked us." replied the Talarian.

The lift stopped, the group exited, and headed for their Stations. Tigan and Luthrun stepped up the upper-deck railing, and stared into the static-filled viewscreen. The Bridge was dimly lit, with the Red Alert bars pulsing. Ransom dropped into his chair and hit the direct comlink down to Engineering, "Marla, what's our status?"

"_Pretty good. Ezri ordering our improved Romulan shields up saved us_." came the Engineer's haggard voice, "_But what was that?_"

Ransom had no answer for her yet and turned to the newly promoted Lt. Commander Adams, who had somehow in all the chaos pinned new rank bars to the collar of his Squadron jacket, "Adams, I need our sensors, now!"

"Almost...got it, there!" he said, and the viewscreen cleared.

Ransom spun in his chair to face it, and his eyes went wide at the view of space in front of the _Equinox_.

An armada of gold juggernaut vessels, each as big as their ship, hung in formation directly ahead. Ransom checked his own readout, almost sixty vessels, this looked very bad.

"Hail them, Mr. Adams." he ordered, as the rest of the Bridge Crew stared at the screen.

Ezri turned to Luthrun, "This is who attacked you?" she asked, and he nodded, but she knew he would.

"Captain, I have an incoming transmission from the lead ship of the armada." said the subdued voice of the Communications Officer, and Ransom nodded.

The viewscreen went dark, then lit up to show not a Kazon, as Ransom expected, but a female of another, new species. She was petite and almost pixie-like, with blond hair and a round cheery face. Her ears were elegant veins that disappeared under her yellow tresses.

"This is Captain Ransom of the starship _Equinox_, identify yourself." demanded Ransom.

She wore a brown leather uniform, with a high metal collar, and glared through the screen at the crew, "_Good, Terrans. We've found the right part of space at last. Prepare to be boarded and taken into custody. Your crew will be executed and you, Captain, will be interrogated._" she spoke with a commanding, husky voice

"Now wait one damn minute, who are you and what is the meaning of attacking the Talarians?" growled Ransom, rising to his feet.

She glared in annoyance at him, "Our attack on the other vessel was unfortunate, we thought they were subjects of the Empire, they were transmitting with an Imperial transponder. Now, prepared to be boarded."

"What do you have against us?" demanded Ransom, "We have committed no crime against you."

"Your ship is an Imperial Battle Cruiser, that's all the evidence I need. We are the advance force, and we've come to avenge ourselves upon the Empire who destroyed our worlds!" she shouted, eyes now wild, "You know what? Forget what I said about being boarded."

She tapped her collar, activating it's comlink, "Invasion Fleet, this is High-Maje Kes, all ships prepare to fire. Destroy the Imperial starship. Enjoy hell, Captain Ransom." she smiled darkly, then she broke the connection.

The viewscreen went dark.

** To be continued...**


	8. Chapter VIII

**Chapter VIII - Bitter Odds**

_Twenty light-years from Olympia Prime, deep inside the Mirror Universe..._

The final words of the woman called Kes echoed across the silent Bridge, and all were still for nearly three seconds. Her obvious hatred for them, as baseless as it was, radiated across the vacuum of space.

"I really got the impression she didn't like us." quipped Gill Adams, from the Communications Station, breaking the tension and ending the moment.

"Shut-up, Gill." snapped Captain Ransom, then he swiveled to face Ezri, who had darted to the Engineering console.

The Trill's fingers flew and the altered panel lit-up, "Ready!" she announced.

"Do it." ordered Ransom.

On the bridge of the _Fury_, flagship of the Ocampan-Kazon Sodality, High-Maje Kes leaned forward on her command throne and shouted the order, "Fire!"

The Imperial battle cruiser was actually moving on their Bridge screen, angling to port and away, a hopeless attempt at escape. Kes clenched her fists in triumph. The first kill, but not the last, oh no, they were just getting started.

"Firing on the vessel." came the reply from her Kazon gunner, and over the comlink it was echoed by her armada, but she gasped as the _Equinox_ wavered and rippled, then vanished!

Orange beams of energy converged on the point of space where the starship had been, but hit nothing. There was a small explosion as two beams actually intersected, but that was all. One-by-one, the Juggernaut-Class vessel's weapons came to stop, and all started scanning the region around them. Rajal stared at the viewscreen, his jaw dropping, "Gah..." was all he could manage to say.

"Where did they go?" demanded Kes, rising from her seat like a bird of prey about to take off from it's branch, "They can't just disappear!"

Her Scanner Officer checked his readings again, then cursed, "I read no Warp trail, no indication of any known propulsion signature, it's like they dropped into a hole in space!"

One hundred kilometers above the massed fleet, a point of space rippled slightly, undetectable to any sensors the Sodality ships possessed. Within their invisible vessel, all aboard stood or sat in silence, which only the Captain dared to break a minute later in a whisper to his First Officer, "Status of the cloaking device, Commander?"

"Seems to be working fine, no glitches." Tigan replied, seated now at the Bridge's Engineering Station.

Tash Luthrun, the bearded Talarian Officer they had rescued earlier, walked over to where the spotted woman sat, and looked over her shoulder. A three-dimensional miniature projection of the _Equinox_ slowly spun in one display, and a blue field outlined it, "Incredible, just incredible." he whispered, "And they can't detect us at all?"

Ezri shook her head. "Incredible." Luthron muttered again in amazement, "Where did you obtain such a device? I have never heard of it's like anywhere in the universe." asked the tall man.

"Funny you should say that." chuckled Tigan and she turned in her chair to gaze at the viewscreen.

The armada was starting to break up, some of the golden ships moving off at Impulse, while others went to Warp, all in different directions. Within a couple of minutes only three remained, the flagship among them. Noah Lessing at the helm breathed a sigh of relief.

"Why don't we fire? Destroy them!" demanded Luthrun, but Ransom shook his head.

"Can't, sorry. That's one of the limitations of the cloak, too much of a drain on power." replied the Terran, "Plus it can cause serious damage to ship's systems if we tried to fire while concealed."

"Humph. We are cowards to hide like this." grumbled the Talarian, and he stomped back to his chosen position at the upper railing.

"Would you rather be bold and dead?" asked Adams, and the Officer glared at him.

Ransom scratched his chin in annoyance and stared at the remaining ships on the screen, "Why does she wait, she can't know we're still here." he frowned, then glanced at Ezri, who shook her head as if to say, nope, the cloak was near perfect.

On the Bridge of the _Fury_, the Ocampa sat in her own chair, glaring at the empty vista of space, "I will not believe they could have escaped, it's not possible."

She paused, deep in thought, then turned to her Second, "Rajal, clear the bridge."

"High-Maje?" he asked, confused.

"Do it!" and he jumped to comply, ordering all the Kazon off.

A moment later the petite blond woman stood alone on the darkened command deck. She took several deep breaths to compose herself, then raised her hands and pressed them to her temples. Summoning the techniques taught to her by her father, she sent her mind outwards into space.

The vacuum was vast and cold, even to her disembodied mind, but she pushed on, searching, not for energy emissions or subspace echoes, like her ships would. She searched for the minds of her prey, their thoughts. No technology she knew of could hide that.

On the Bridge of the _Equinox_, Rudy Ransom's face froze and Ezri noticed, "Rudy, what?"

"I...I don't know, it's almost like...no...I must have imagined it." said the confused Terran.

"Imagined what?" demanded the Trill, alarms going off in her suspicious mind. Rudy didn't imagine very much.

"Well, it was like I felt a...presence, probing my thoughts." he finished.

"Oh, no..." moaned Ezri, and she spun toward Noah Lessing, "Go to Warp now!"

"What?" he asked, confused, but it was to late.

The _Fury_ opened up on the area the _Equinox_ was hiding in, twin energy beams cutting through space, the first beam missing, but the second found it's mark. It slammed into the unprotected bottom of the saucer section and cut into it, burning up through every deck to explode out of the top in a fiery burst of debris and exposed air.

On the Bridge everything went crazy. Panels overloaded and the deck lurched, tossing nearly everyone out of their chairs. Only Ransom and Tigan managed to stay seated.

"Disengage cloak! Shields up, get us out of here Mr. Lessing!" shouted the Captain, and Noah shook his head to clear it as he stood.

"Aye, sir!" the Terran's hands flew across the helm, and the _Equinox_ leaped forward, fully visible now, and bolted away from the rising Juggernaut.

Back on the _Fury_, Kes left the weaponry panel and dropped back into her throne, exhausted, as the Bridge crew trooped back in, eager for the chase, "Pursuit course, maximum speed, kill them!" she rasped, as she held her head in her hands.

"Yes, High-Maje!" replied Rajal, and the _Fury_ shot forward, after the fleeing white starship, the other two Sodality ships right behind them, "Should I contact the rest of the attack force?"

"We are three ships to their one, order the armada to the original target." she said, almost gasping.

The Kazon looked with concern at his commander, "Are you all right? Should I summon the Doctor?"

She waved him off and sat up, somewhat regained, "No, just destroy that Terran bastard."

The_ Equinox_ flew through space, and on the Bridge all was chaos. Damage reports were coming in nonstop, and Ransom was shouting through the comlink at his Chief Engineer, demanding more power. Ezri was with Eleanor at the Environmental Console, the two working in tandem to seal off the punctured decks and mount emergency force fields where they could not. But the damage was too extensive, not all decks could be sealed.

"Rudy! We've sealed all violated Decks but 6 and 7, they cannot be done from here!" shouted Ezri, "All access from the lower decks had to be sealed. I've got to go down there myself and lock them off manually, or we could loose the entire saucer section!"

Ransom hesitated, then nodded, so Tigan smiled encouragingly at Eleanor athen ran into the turbolift. Rudy steeled himself, mentally stopping himself from watching her go, he had to be the Captain first, her lover second. But a chill ran up his spine, nonetheless, this did not feel right. But what could he do, it had to be done.

"Eleanor, scan for a nebula, star system, _anything_ nearby we can put between us and them." he ordered and she nodded, then he turned to his Helmsman, "Noah, how close are they?"

"Uh, let's see, yeah, they are accelerating, and will be in firing range of us in six minutes." said the Officer, "Unless those decks can be sealed, then we can go to Warp."

_Ezri, you've got to seal those decks_, thought Rudy, _or we're all dead._

The Trill concerned exited from the turbolift into a close approximation to the hell the Ocampa Kes had wished upon them. Toxic smoke and charred deck plates, plasma fires burned, this was impossible. Ezri dashed across the tilting deck, the gravity askew, and into an emergency supply room.

As gas began to swirl around her ankles, she popped a locker and pulled out the violet and black Romulan spacesuit. Ezri pulled off her boots, and peeled her black leather uniform off, stripping down to bra and briefs. She paused a moment, then grabbed a couple of tiny items from her belt and secreted them in hidden slots in her lingerie.

She dressed in the suit, then stuffed her clothes in the locker and sealed it. She stepped coughing into the smoke, snapped the helmet into place and activated the suit's atmosphere. She headed down the corridor at a brisk run, and activated the suit's comlink.

"Tigan to Eleanor, I'm on Deck 6, Forward, where's the breach?" she asked, then received the location.

On the Bridge, Ransom swiveled toward Environmental at the sound of Ezri's voice, but said nothing, there was nothing he could do, so he turned back to look at the viewscreen. It displayed a rear view, with the Kazon juggernauts lined up and bearing down on them, "Status of shields?" he asked of Lessing.

"Eighty-nine percent, the rest is keeping the saucer-section from full breach." reported the helmsman, and Ransom gripped his arm rests.

"Arm rear torpedoes and fire at the lead ship the moment it enters weapons range." he ordered, and Lessing complied, activating the appropriate systems.

Down on Deck 6, Ezri began to see the signs of a hull breach ahead, the plasma fires had vanished and there was a noticeable atmospheric pull forward. When it started to get too much she activated her magnetic boots. Rounding a corner she stopped, this was it.

The bulkhead beyond was a mess of twisted and cooked plating, with a puncture as wide as a shuttlecraft where the floor should be. Looking into it she saw that it went down two stories, and then out into space itself. Looking up she saw a duplicate tear. She turned to the emergency controls on the left wall and typed in the command codes to seal off the corridor.

The panel blinked green and she stepped back as heavy blast doors slid from the walls and clanged shut. There was the clank of the magnetic seals and the whistling stopped.

"That wasn't so hard." Ezri smiled to herself within her helmet, then spun on her heal and headed back to the turbolift, one deck to go.

On the Bridge, things looked grim, "The lead Kazon ship will be within maximum firing range in thirty seconds, Captain." announced Lessing.

"Sir, I think I found something." said Eleanor from the Science Station.

"Well, hurry up, tell me." said Ransom, a glimmer of hope suddenly returning.

"I'm reading a star system, Bolaris Minor, nearby." she replied, transferring Tactical data to the helm, "No planets, just a large asteroid belt orbiting a red giant. It was mapped by a Imperial mining probe almost a century ago."

Lessing made a quick calculation, "It's only twenty seconds from here at Warp 4, sir. The structural integrity should hold for a trip through warp space that long."

Ransom did not hesitate, "Set a course, and go to Warp on my mark!" then he hit his comlink, "Ransom to Tigan. Commander, we're about to go to Warp for a few seconds, no choice."

There was no answer, "Tigan, did you hear me? Ezri-"

"Captain, the lead ship is firing!" advised Eleanor.

The _Equinox_ shook as energy beams were absorbed by the shields. Ransom bit his lip, knowing he had no choice, "Now, Noah!"

The _Fury_ fired a second time, twin cutting beams racing through space after the fleeing ship again, but their prey suddenly shot forward into Warp. The energy beams just missed. Kes slammed a balled fist into her armrest in anger.

"Track their Warp trail!" she ordered.

Rajal scanned for a few seconds as the three ships came to a halt, then he turned in surprise, "Sensors show they just dropped out of Warp barely a quarter parsec from here."

"He's insane, like all Terrans. Send to the other two ships, go to Warp 7, after him!" the High-Maje ordered.

The _Terror_, one of the other two ships following the High-Maje's vessel, received their coordinates and jumped to Warp right away, eager to please their High-Maje. The Juggernaut-Class warship traveled in Warp space for only three seconds then shot out, and ran smack into an asteroid nearly a third of a kilometer wide.

The Bridge crew on the _Equinox_ cheered as they watched, on their viewscreen, one of their pursuers explode in a blast of firery plasma and hull debris. Then the asteroid itself blew apart, caused by the subsequent anti-matter explosion, "Excellent strategy, Captain, pushing that rock into their path." congratulated Luthrun.

"Lets go deep, Noah." ordered Ransom, and their starship turned away from the still expanding explosion and plunged into the belt.

A moment later the other two ships dropped from Warp, almost a thousand kilometers off of the field's perimeter. Kes regarded the devastation on her screen and swore loudly.

"Fools, they brought it on themselves. Scan for the _Equinox_." she ordered.

"They are within the belt, here." the Scanning Specialist brought up a three-dimensional Tactical outline of the dense asteroid-filled star system.

The Imperial starship appeared within, indicated by a red blinking point of light. Kes stared at the grid thoughtfully, then said, "All right, here is what we'll do..." and she outlined her plan of action.

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

Ezri coughed and came awake with a start. She was lying at a painful angle across a chunk of gravity plating, what had happened? _Oh yeah, I was almost to the second breach, when a conduit blew out, almost right beside me..._

She climbed painfully to her feet and looked groggily around. The breach was still ahead and below, and it had widened. She had to close this deck off, now!

She stepped back and turned toward this deck's emergency controls, and entered the command to seal. Nothing happened. She tried again, still nothing. Then there was a creak and she turned to look, the deck was buckling. Through the breach she could see open space and planetary debris floated by.

"We must me in some sort of asteroid field, at low sublight." she said to herself, then her eyes widened, as from far off she spotted something moving toward them.

She blinked in a memorized pattern, bringing her special cybernetic contacts online, and increased magnification by fifty times. A Kazon Juggernaut snapped into view, and it fired upwards at them.

The beams smacked into the shields and continued burning into them, twin concentrated blasts. Ezri increased her boot's magnetic cohesion and rode out the impacts. They were running out of time, she had to finish her job.

On the Bridge, Lessing read his displays, and shouted, "Shields at thirty percent and dropping."

"Forward phaser bank, fire!" ordered Ransom and the _Equinox_ came alive, as three energy beams shot out of the saucer section, and down at the rising Kazon ship.

One missed, while the other two hit, and the gold ship's shields flared, "Torpedoes, full spread, fire!" ordered the Captain, and Lessing hit the launch control.

Four photons shot downwards and slammed one-after-another into the rapidly rising ship. While nearly a century old in design, the weapons still packed quite a punch. The first two disabled the shields, and the third slammed into the ship's rear mounted engines.

There was a blast of hull plating and the Sodality vessel lurched, spiraled to port. It shot past the red-striped Constitution-Class, still heading upwards, and _Equinox_'s phasers scored twin hits as they went by. With it's shields down, the blows were devastating, lancing directly into the ship's main Engineering section.

That did it, and the Juggernaut ruptured, then exploded. The fireball that used to be the Kazon vessel continued to accelerate away from the _Equinox_, until slamming into the underside of a massive rock. The _Equinox_'s shields absorbed the scattered debris and radiation with ease.

"Lets go, half Impulse, bearing 2-3, mark 6." ordered the Captain, and they shot into the thick of the asteroid field...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

Ezri tried again, to no avail, to get the panel to seal the doors. She growled in annoyment and hauled out her suit's plasma torch, igniting it. She cut into the panel as the ship lurched beneath her. _Noah is putting us through an obstacle course_, she thought, _maybe I made a mistake signing on with a gang of Terrans riding around the galaxy in a symbol of fascism. But, to the task at hand..._

She shut off the beam, grabbed the useless panel and pulled with all her might. She grunted with the effort and braced herself with a heavy boot against the wall, then redoubled her effort, "Come on, you stupid piece of crap!" she muttered, eyes clenched.

Then it came loose all at once, nearly bowling her over backwards. She chucked it to her right, where it dropped through the breach. As the panel vaporized into a blast of ionized light against the shields, Ezri grabbed the manual release and yanked it downwards. The doors emerged from the walls and started to close.

Turning, Ezri released her magnetic boots from the deck and fired her suit's thrusters. She shot through the rapidly closing corridor, sailed over the breach and landed on the other side in a crouch. She activated her boots again, as she was already sliding backwards toward the tear, and she came to a stop. She breathed a sigh of relief, "That was a lot quicker then going the long way around." she whispered to herself.

She then headed for the panel on this side. She was almost finished her mission and she could not wait to get out of this bulky spacesuit.

The _Equinox_ flew up and over an asteroid, then under the next, and on the Bridge Luthrun had to grab onto the upper-deck railing to stay on his feet. Noah swung the ship to starbaord and saw an opening up ahead, "One red dwarf star, as ordered, sir." announced Lessing.

"Good, we'll conceal ourselves in the sun's corona and wait them out." said Ransom, and Luthrun nodded in agreement, another good idea.

_Then again, maybe not_, thought Ransom, as they shot out of the belt and saw the six Kazon vessels lying in wait for them, "Hard a-port, bring us around!" shouted Ransom, "Get us back into the belt!"

But it was too late, the hunters had spotted their prey and opened up. Orange beams shot through space and connected, either with the _Equinox_, or with the rocks behind them. The ship was halfway through her turn and the shots impacted them on the starboard side, buffeting the shields, which abruptly collapsed. The next shots hit home.

"Brace yourselves!" shouted the Captain, as everything went to hell.

Conduits ruptured, consoles overloaded. Gill Adams managed to stand and turn halfway from the Communications board before it went up, blasting him sideways into the railing which shattered, and he collapsed in a smoking heap beside Ransom.

The Helm erupted into sparks and Lessing screamed as he was electrocuted. Rudy leapt forward and pulled him off, breaking the connection. The young man collapsed into his arms, out cold, his hands a twisted mess. Ransom gazed at the approaching vessels on the viewscreen. What now?

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

Ezri had the last blast door closed, as the ship was rocked from the first of the Kazon impacts. She ran for the turbolift, boots clanking on the deck. Then with a terrible wrenching sound the deck six meters in front of her erupted upwards in an explosion and she was thrown backwards into the ceiling, cracking her head against the back of her helmet, hard, stunning her.

She dropped to the floor, but the deck crumpled outwards, and she was sucked from the ship, into space. She spiraled downwards, flipping end-for-end, debris from her starship accompanying her, as she spun toward the red sun.

The gravitic pressure was too much and she dropped into unconsciousness. Far above, the _Equinox_ burned in space, unaware that it had lost one of it's own.  
**  
To be continued...**


	9. Chapter IX

**Chapter IX - She Who Hesitates**

**The Bolaris Minor Star System...**

Like a fallen angel, she plunged toward the corona of the red dwarf. Ezri Tigan's Romulan spacesuit began to glow, and an automatic beacon came on, broadcasting in fifty simultaneous lingua-codes. With a burst of suit-controlled mini thrusters, her spin subsided and the shell's armor began to carbonize and quiver. A small crack appeared in the tinted visor of the helmet, then it spider-webbed, the atmosphere hissing out to instantly vaporize.

With only seconds to annihilation, there came a flash of a energy, and the seemingly doomed Trill vanished into a transporter beam. To her misfortune, it did not originate from her own ship. Debris that had accompanied her thus far continued on, and then melted from existence.

The _RSS Equinox_, flagship of the Olympian Star Squadron, sat nearby dead in space, plasma fires crawling across her hulls. Bathed in the scarlet light of a dying sun, she stood poised on the edge of oblivion, as the six Kazon warships who had intercepted her rose from their orbit to surround her, weapons at the ready.

But the order had been sent from the leading vessel: the _KOS Fury_, and they did not fire. The armada's commander had realized her order to destroy the Imperial Cruiser was too hasty, she needed intelligence the ship could provide. But that was not all. For High-Maje Kes, the Ocampa who had united all eighteen of the Kazon Sects, had discovered something of great interest.

The slim and attractive young blond woman gazed with fascination at the body that Rajal, her Second, held in his muscular arms. Kes could not resist, she reached out with slim fingers and traced the outline of the spacesuit's helmet, her gaze locked on the still face within. They stood on the hanger deck of the _Fury_, and all around them troops were gathering weapons and loading into assault shuttles, preparing to board their prize.

"Is she still alive?" asked Kes hopefully, then she touched the young woman's mind with her own, "Ah, good, she is."

She broke the trance and shifted her gaze back to Rajal, who was looking at her strangely, "Have her taken to my quarters, and send the Doctor to see to her injuries."

"Maje?" Rajal asked, this did not seem wise to the older Kazon.

"You _dare_ hesitate when I command you, Second?" the Ocampa's eyes flashed and he paled, feeling his skin starting to heat up.

"N-no! I hear and obey, Maje!" and he darted out of the room, hefting the heavy spacesuit, with it's alien occupant.

Behind him the High-Maje turned to face the shuttles and tapped her collar, activating her comlink, "Hanger control, open the bay doors and dispatch the shuttles." she tapped her collar again, "Kes to invasion leaders."

Over the link she heard the four acknowledgments, "Take the enemy ship and exterminate all who resist you. But I want the Terran pig Ransom alive, do you understand?" and she smiled at the four simultaneous answers.

The portal now open, the leather-armored woman strode to the edge of the deck and stood looking out into space, where the _Equinox_ lay beaten. The bulky shuttles soared over her and out into the abyss, bound for the captured vessel. Kes smiled again, her conquest of the Alpha Quadrant had gotten off to a rocky start, two of her ships were gone, but now things were back on track.

And there was the fascinating bonus waiting for her, in her quarters. She turned and exited the bay...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

On the Bridge of the _Equinox_, Captain Rudulf Ransom cradled his wounded helmsman in his arms and gazed at the viewscreen. It displayed the red sun of Bolaris Minor, and the Kazon Juggernauts who surrounded his ship. He carefully lowered Noah to the deck and rose.

Commander Luthrun was crouched by Rudy's Comm Officer, Gill Adams, checking for a pulse. The Talarian also rose to his feet, "Your man is alive, Captain, barely. But he won't be for long without medical assistance."

Ransom nodded and glanced at Lt. Eleanor Bentley in her smoke-stained black uniform. The brunette Terran they had taken on, back at _Terok_ _Nor_, it seemed like a thousand years ago now, was leaning over the smoking Environmental Station, "Eleanor, status of our Life Support."

She turned to look at him, "Operating at minimum levels, but stable. It's the only thing that is." something bleeped at her Science Station and she dashed over to check.

Ransom slapped his combadge, "Bridge to Sickbay, we need a medic up here." then he cursed, the turbolifts would be down, they had to be.

"_Sickbay here._" came the nasal voice of the EMH2, "_Both of my medics are deployed on the lower decks, we have casualties there as well. You're going to have to do without them for the time being._"

"But we have people dying here!" shouted the Captain in frustration.

"_Oh, wait a second, hold on._" said the Hologram and he cut the comlink.

There was a hum and a flash of light from the upper deck, the Hologram appeared and looked around in amazement at the heavily damaged bridge. His gaze fell on Lt. Commander Adams and he strode down and crouched by him. He reached for something on his hip, then frowned, "Wait, where's my medkit and tricorder, I had them before I transferred my program...oh, right..."

Eleanor popped a hatch under the damaged communications panel, withdrew a Cardassian case and tossed it to Luthrun, who passed it to the Doctor. He opened it and gazed with distaste at the alien medkit and tricorder, then sighed and got to work.

"Captain, that reading I got, four shuttles are on there way here, ETA seven minutes." advised Bentley.

"Boarding parties." said Luthrun, and Ransom nodded grimly at the bearded Talarian.

The EMH2 finished stabilizing Adams and moved to Lessing. Ransom stepped to his command chair and turned on the comlink to Engineering, "Marla, this is Ransom, you there?"

There was no answer. He tapped his combadge and repeated his message, but there was still no response, he frowned.

"We can't stay here, the Bridge will be their primary goal." said the Captain, and he stepped to the upper deck and opened another hatch.

From within he drew Klingon disruptor rifles and tossed one each to Luthrun and Eleanor. He drew out one for himself, and two hand weapons as well, which he jammed in his belt, then straightened up, "Computer." he commanded.

"_Working._" came the monotone reply.

"Recognize Ransom, Rudulf, Captain of this ship, command code Gamma-Razorback-Alpha-Prime." recited the Terran.

"_Recognized, proceed_." replied the interface.

"Lock down all Command and Control consoles, limiting access to myself and Commander Ezri Tigan." he ordered, but an error tone sounded.

"What is it computer?" he demanded, he didn't have time for any sort of malfunction.

"_Unable to comply, the First Officer is not on board the_ Equinox." answered the machine and Ransom felt his insides turn to lead.

"What? Computer, where is Commander Ti-" demanded Eleanor, but she halted in mid-speech at a look from her Captain.

"Computer, modify previous lockout command, and replace Commander Tigan with the Science Officer, Lt. Bentley. Only she and I are to have access to the command protocols, understood?" he commanded, having regained control of himself, and he looked again at Eleanor, who nodded.

"_Affirmative_." came the computer's response and every active panel darkened.

Ransom was already moving, he signaled Luthrun and the two of them picked up Adams and carried him into the head. They returned for Noah Lessing and laid him down beside the other Officer, then sealed the bathroom door. The EMH2 looked critically at Ransom's choice of a hiding place, but they could not take the men with them.

"Lets go, Eleanor, lead the way to the emergency stairs." he ordered, and the Terran headed for the emergency exit next to the viewscreen.

Ransom turned to the EMH2, "Doctor, you return to Sickbay, there my be more wounded on the way." and the Hologram nodded, then vanished.

Ransom stood alone on his Bridge and took a moment for one last look. He hoped this would not be the last time he stood here. _But I would give the ship to that blond witch, if it would bring Ezri back to me..._

The deck shuddered beneath him and he knew what it was. Without looking back, he disappeared through the hatch and was gone.

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

In her private quarters on the _Fury_, Kes locked the door after the departing ship's physician and dimmed the lights. She plodded silently to her bedroom and stood in the doorway, looking in at her unexpected guest. The alien woman lay sleeping now, her injuries repaired, and Kes's gaze slid over her.

She especially liked the spots, which she had first mistaken for an exotic series of tattoos. They emerged from the alien girl's tousled dark hair and traveled down her temples, winding over the curves of her body, disappearing under the slight under-clothing she wore.

Kes sat on the bed beside her and ever so lightly traced one line of markings from her neck to belly, then let her finger glide in soft circles around the girl's navel. She moved in her sleep and exhaled slowly, as she began to rise into consciousness. Kes continued her ministrations and the woman's back arched, her hands tugging at the bedcovers.

"Mmm...Nerys, I've missed you..." mumbled Ezri as she came to slowly at the subtle touch. Then she froze, _Nerys? Kira Nerys?_ And she sat up as if on springs, grabbing for her disruptor, but her bedside table was strangely absent.

Then it all came back to her: the mad rush to seal off the decks, the explosive breach, and her tumble into space. She spun around on the bed and peered at the dim figure who sat beside her, "Who are you, and how the hell did you get in my quarters?" she demanded.

"I think you have it backwards, my dear." came the throaty reply. Ezri muffled a gasp, she recognized _that_ voice, and this wasn't her bed, or Rudy's, or-_ohmigod, it can't be..._

She leapt from the bed, dashed forward, and made it half way to the door, when incredibly her muscles locked, and she froze in mid stride! She gasped, breathing hard, _what's happening, why can't I move?_ her mind raced, she was in BIG trouble, no mistaking that.

The Ocampa rose and walked leisurely across the room to stand in front of her, an amused smile on her lips, "I wouldn't try that again, or anything else for that matter. Now, are you going to be good?" she asked, while Ezri shot daggers back at her.

Kes reached up and linked her index finger under the Trill's jaw, and with seemingly no effort lifted her, still locked in mid dash, a foot off the ground, then pulled her finger away. Ezri's eyes went wide as she seemingly floated in mid air.

Kes smiled up at her, "Do not underestimate me. Those who have in the past did not live to regret it."

"All right..." Ezri gave in, and she was released to drop back to the deck.

The leader of the invasion fleet walked back to the bed, sat down, and patted a spot beside her. Ezri stared at her for a moment, then returned and sat down beside her. Kes looked her up and down, sitting rigid and alert for an attack, and laughed, for a moment sounding like an adolescent.

_This woman is wacko_, Ezri fought hard to show no fear.

Kes leaned back on her hands, and regarded her prize, "When I first saw you, I thought you were Terran, and believe me, if you were, you would have been returned to your plunge into the sun. _Minus_ your spacesuit."

Ezri made no reply, biding her time.

"But with your spots, and they are quite striking, by the way, and our Doctor's scans, I know you are not." Kes finished, then asked, "What are you, may I ask? And are there more like you back in the Empire?" she grinned, "Please say yes."

"Yeah, sure, a whole planet full, I'm a Trill." replied Ezri, watching the lounging warlord out of the corners of her eyes, she did not like the way this Kes was sizing her up, did not like it in the least.

"My name is Tigan, Ezri Tigan. You're the High-Maje Kes, right?"

"Ezri, mmm, it rolls off the tongue, I like it." Kes replied, moving closer on the round bed and turning to face Ezri's profile, "Yes, but just call me Kes, I hate that title, it is just a necessity. The Kazon respond better to me if I make them honor a chain-of-command."

She stared at the fidgeting Trill and decided to change the subject, "So, you have aligned yourself with our Imperial enemies, how unfortunate. Or are you their slave?"

"I'm no slave!" shot back Ezri, and Kes nodded with satisfaction, "And you have made a grave mistake," Ezri continued, "they are not the Empire, the _Equinox_ is a Rebellion cruiser. The Empire fell a long time ago. You are hunting for ghosts."

"I highly doubt that." said Kes, "The Terran Empire that destroyed my world was vast, and even if what you say is true, there are still Terran's aboard that ship, and they will be exterminated, the first of a great purge!"

She gripped Ezri's arm tightly and wrenched her around to face her, her eyes blazing, "How could you side with murderers! That species is a plague, I should have you executed! Tell me why I shouldn't."

Ezri did not answer, only gazed back at her, showing no fear, "What information can you give me?" Kes demanded, "And believe me I can take it from you, as easily as breathing, something you most likely will not be doing after I've finished. Cooperate and you will be spared." the venomous Ocampa outlined.

The Trill still said nothing, just stared defiantly back at her, and they sat there for more then a minute, neither barely breathing. Finally Kes smiled, then laughed, "I like you, you have spirit, you remind me of me."

The blonde woman's grip on her shoulders lessened and became soft, and Ezri suddenly became aware of Kes's scent, it was floral and bewitching. She couldn't resist, she inhaled it with a low gasp, it was intoxicating, and visions of her former lover, the Intendant of Bajor came again, unbidden in her mind. Her eyes closed and she shuddered.

Kes reached up and traced a finger across the fine scar that ran from Ezri's temple to her eye socket, "Where did you get this?" she asked, as Ezri thrilled to her touch, electricity crawling through her bones.

"A...souvenir, um...from a Klingon..." she moaned, as the Ocampa's eyes moved from the mark to gaze deep into her eyes.

"You are so beautiful..." she whispered, then ever so softly, Kes leaned forward, and their lips met, moist and soft.

Ezri couldn't believe what was happening, what was coming over her? An image of Rudy flashed past her eyes and for a moment she hesitated, then it was gone as quickly as it had come. Kes's embrace overwhelmed her and the Trill gave in now, totally in the High-Maje's power. The galaxy fell away, and she stopped thinking all together...

**To be continued...**


	10. Chapter X

**Chapter X - Only the Lost**

On the disabled Starship _Equinox_...

Captain Rudy Ransom popped a release and lowered the hatch from the ceiling.

Ever so slowly Rudy poked his head down, then carefully looked back-and-forth. He saw and sensed no one near, so he grabbed the hatch's skirt and swung himself down, dropping to the floor of the starship's Laundry. He un-slung his rifle and scanned around him then. Satisfied it was all clear, he stood.

He strode forward, as Eleanor Bentley and Commander Luthrun dropped from the hatch behind him and followed. Rudy reached a door and tapped the release. It slid back to reveal the Rec Deck, as the eighth level of the saucer section housed the ship's recreation area. Holo-games, gymnasium and personal storage lockers, all part of the off-duty entertainment of a starship crew from more then a century ago.

And as this ship had been part of the Imperial Fleet, it also had an public Agony Booth, combat ring, and gallows. But for Ransom, Deck 8 housed his favorite part of the ship. Simply called the Greens by the crew, a botanical garden curved nearly thirty meters ahead of him now.

Rudy paused to breath in the fragrance of the sunflowers that bloomed year round. A tenderbot hummed past, scanning the trees for any sign of rot, and performing required pruning. Ransom walked carefully down the winding path, while Eleanor and Luthrun trooped after him. The trim Science Officer was consulting a map of the ship on a padd, looking up now and then.

Luthrun's head swung left and right, every shadow, every sound, a possible threat, "What a waste of space." he snarled under his breath, but Ransom heard.

"We spend weeks, sometimes months in space, so I'd go insane without the Greens. Best place to read." whispered Ransom, but the Talarian shook his head in annoyance.

"You could just as-" started Luthrun, but he then halted, bringing his rifle to bear, and Ransom had his weapon up too.

Eleanor was jarred to a stop and she glanced at her Captain in annoyance, "What? I don't understand-" there was a flash of movement and two other crew members burst from a cluster of trees and onto the path, both firing behind them with hand weapons!

There was a blast of return fire, striking the trailing one in the back, and he toppled over with a scream. Three Kazon emerged from the foliage, giving chase, and Ransom yelled challenge and opened fire, his first shots flying home. A Kazon was hit side-on, the force of the beam smashing him into a spread of bushes.

The other two invaders whirled and fired upon them. Luthrun thrust Eleanor behind a tree and ducked under a beam, firing his own weapon. He strode forward, clumsily blasting, not used to the strangely-shaped Klingon rifle that was standard defensive issue on the _Equinox_.

Angered at being so roughly handled, Eleanor raised her own rifle and stepped out from behind the tree, planning to join the fight. But a noise from behind her made her turn in time to see a smiling Kazon point a pistol at her head. She glared and dropped her weapon. He stepped forward and reached down for it, a fatal mistake.

She didn't look dangerous, but looks can be deceiving, especially in Eleanor's case. She flicked her wrist a certain way and a wickedly sharp dagger dropped into her hand. She lashed out and jammed it _hard_ into the Kazon's throat. His eyes went wide and he jerked, dropping his weapon. Eleanor caught it, reversed it, and blasted him in the chest, sending burning organs and bone blazing out his back.

He dropped and she bent over him, searching, then found what she was looking for. She pocketed the wallet sized item and turned back to the battle going on to her right.

Ransom was running forward, between the two remaining Kazon, and he thrust the butt of his rifle into the solar plexus of one of them. The alien man grunted and dropped to his knees, so Ransom smashed him across the face. Teeth and blood sprayed horizontally, and the intruder went down.

The other made the mistake of turning to engage Ransom and Luthrun's shots mowed him down. Rudy rose from his battle crouch, breathing hard, "They're not so tough, they may resemble Klingons, but they fight like Ferengi."

Luthrun smiled and raised his rifle in salute, but a shout came from behind them.

They turned, weapons up as the outer doors opened, and a large group of Ransom's Terran crew ran into the Greens, with an even larger group of Kazon trooping after them. Luthrun glanced at Ransom and nodded. Rudy nodded back and together they opened fire, the battle joined...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

_On the High Maje's command ship..._

Ezri came awake, all at once this time, and sat up in bed, clutching the sheets to her naked body, "Oh, son of a-" then she grabbed her head, as it suddenly flared with pain.

An odd metallic taste permeated the back of her mouth and she recognized the signs immediately, as she had felt the same way once before. She had been the victim of telesynaptic manipulation. Anger filled her and she grabbed up what clothing she had, dressing quickly. She burst from the bedroom to find the Ocampan warlord reclining in a leather chair, studying the Kazon equivalent of a data-padd.

Kes looked up and smiled, but the grin faded at the expression on the Trill's face, "What?"

Ezri's tone was hard and low, "Is that how you obtain all your partners? Mental manipulation?" she asked in a tone cold as comet ice.

Kes's face displayed angry surprise, then she got control of herself, "I only influenced what was already there. You enjoyed it, believe me I didn't need to read your mind to tell that."

"You clouded my mind with images from my past and used me, I should _kill_ you!" Ezri took a step forward, eyes flashing, hands twisted into claws, "In fact I think I will." and she leaped forward.

The High-Maje was on her feet and Ezri's charge was stopped as soon as it began, caught tight in the grip of Kes's telekinesis. Kes walked up to her and smiled in satisfaction at the naked hatred that flowed from Ezri's gaze.

"Fine, be that way. I've had better anyway." she said and struck Ezri across the face, knocking her to the floor.

The Trill rose into a crouch and glared up at the imperious Ocampa. Kes smiled down at her, confident that she had the upper hand, "Now, to business. I have some questions, and you will answer to the best of your ability." she raised the padd and turned it so Ezri could see the image it displayed.

"This Terran, do you recognize him?" Ezri paused then rose back up onto her feet. Deciding it was to try biding her time again, she took the padd and examined the picture, but shook her head.

"Nope. Never saw him before."

Kes sighed, "I didn't think you would, but I had to ask. The required information can be extracted from your ship's Captain, as a loyal officer of the Empire, he will tell me."

"What did the man do?" asked Ezri, curious despite her dire situation.

Kes stared down a the hazy image on the padd, "He destroyed my homeworld, with one cruel stroke. If I didn't mention it before, my race is the Ocampa, and more then a century ago, an entity from a race called the Nacene visited our star system, it's craft malfunctioning. My people were just starting to travel out into our system and we offered to assist the being. While trying to make repairs there was an accident and a rift opened up between our point in the galaxy and yours."

She paused, then her husky voice grew colder still, "Before it could be closed, a ship from your Empire passed through, commanded by that man on the padd. My ancestors greeted him, we used to be such an accommodating people, and at first the Terrans returned our attention in kind. We had made two new allies at the same time, my people rejoiced, and threw a celebration in our planet's capital."

Kes stopped again, the tale obviously painful for her, "At the height of the celebrations, the Terran starship attacked the Nacene's vessel, while the Commander took our leaders hostage. He demanded our planet's surrender and transported troops down. When we refused to give in, he had the Elders executed. But he was unaware of the mental abilities that we Ocampa possessed. We struck back. Their weapons useless, the Terrans fled back to their vessel and left the star system."

"We thought them gone and started to attend to the injured. But the next morning they returned and unleashed a weapon of tremendous destructive power upon us. It took only two hours and all was destroyed, the seas burned away, the forests vaporized, our lush tropical paradise transformed into a desert. Only a handful of Ocampa survived, in caves below the surface. The Imperial ship departed and returned through the closing rift." her narrative over, Kes stared at the wall, her back to Ezri, overcome with emotion.

"...My people possess an ability called Empathic Memory, and the experiences of the survivors have been passed down through every generation, all the way to me. But my people have become shadows of their former selves, scared and pitiful creatures, only a few retained even a fragment of our past mental powers. But I took to my father's meager training and rediscovered what had been lost, and much more." she took a deep breath to complete the retelling.

"I left the pathetic underground city the Nacene had constructed for us and encountered the barbaric Kazon who were mining our surface. It was easy to take control of them and within less then a year I had united their race and mobilized them with one goal: the conquest of the Alpha Quadrant. We attacked the Nacene's Array and took his technology." she turned back to Ezri, "So now you see why-"

And Ezri rose from her crouch and SMASHED the padd across Kes's face with both hands, knocking her backwards over a table!

Ezri leapt on top of Kes and grasped her head in both hands, then started pounding it against the floor over-and-over!

"BITCH! I don't care what score you have to settle, no one does _that_ to me!" the Trill shouted, and she kneed the Ocampa in the groin, "I killed the last person who did this to me, took advantage of me! And I'm going to kill you too!"

But she stopped and slowly released Kes's hair, and the Ocampa dropped back to the floor, heavily stunned. Ezri straddled her, breathing hard, staring down at her attacker. Why had she stopped? _ I have to kill the monster, why am I not tearing her head from her shoulders? I killed Janel for doing the same thing to me..._

She paused, lost in thought._ But I had to kill Janel. After what he did to me, I knew he would do it again, and eventually kill me to cover up his crimes, I had no choice. But Kes is far worse and she has to be stopped, she'll kill Marla and Rudy and..._

She caught herself. That was it, that was the real reason._ If I killed Kes in cold blood, Rudy would be disappointed in me, for if I ever see him again, correction, WHEN I see him again, he'll ask what happened, and I can't lie to him. And he'd be right, it's wrong to just kill the bitch outright._

_Damnit!_ she swore internally, then got to her feet. She looked around then went into the bedroom. Ten minutes later the doors to the High-Maje's quarters hissed open and she strode down the deck. She walked past a pair of Kazon guards lounging near a command station and they snapped to attention, at the sight of the woman dressed in the High-Maje uniform.

She had found a battle helmet in Kes's closet and with the visor down she was virtually identical to the Ocamapa. Well, close enough to pass a brief glance anyway. She nodded to the guards and stepped into the lift. Her only hope was to get to a transporter or shuttle as fast as possible, before either Kes woke up, or someone found her in her quarters...

**To be continued...**


	11. Chapter XI

**Chapter XI - Battle Cry**

Back on the starship _Equinox_, battle raged through the ship for control of the disabled vessel. The invaders had nearly double as many men as the crew, but the Terran's had the advantage of knowing their environment, so losses were higher on the Kazon side. But it was still a bloody business.

Rudy and Luthrun tore down the corridor, with Eleanor leading, and she ran to the lift doors, which refused to open, "The turbolifts are still offline!" she shouted at the two men who had stopped and were firing back down the corridor at the approaching Kazon squad, only ten meters behind them.

"This is Deck 19, we don't need the lift, just get the door open, do it now!" ordered Ransom, pressed against the wall, firing back down the hallway, sending a Kazon diving back behind the curve.

Eleanor turned back to the door, the man was insane, there was no point to this, they should surrender, but she blasted the access panel open, she had her orders. She dug inside and found the manual release and the lift access swished open. She looked inside and sure enough there was no car, just an empty shaft, "Captain, we have nowhere to go!" she shouted, furious.

The Captain fired another burst, then his Klingon rifle bleeped and he chucked it, the power cell had run dry. He drew a disrupter pistol and stepping backwards he continued firing until he reached the shaft. Luthrun was being more economical and was choosing his shots, waiting for one of the concealed Kazon to lean out and fire.

He squeezed the trigger, received a scream in reward, and smiled. Luthrun was enjoying himself, despite the bad laser burn on his arm and the cracked ribs. This rifle was easy to use now, he had just needed a little target practice, and the Kazon had been happy to oblige. He glanced for a moment back at the two Terrans, what was the Terran Captain up to?

Ransom ignored the annoyed look on his Science Officer's face and leaned into the darkened lift shaft. He could just make out his goal on the opposite side, "Computer, recognize Ransom."

"_Recognized._" came the male monotone.

"Open lift door S-3 on Deck 19." he commanded, and with a hiss a portal slid open on the other side of the shaft. Ransom smiled at his confused Officer.

Eleanor glanced at the blueprints on her padd, "This isn't on my schematics. What is it?"

Ransom only smiled and turned back to Luthrun, "Tash! Blast the light panel and then get over here."

The Talarian complied and the hallway was plunged into darkness. He stepped up beside the Terrans as Ransom holstered his pistol and jumped across the gap. Eleanor followed, Luthrun after her, and with a command Ransom sealed both lift doors behind them...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

_Onboard the _Fury_..._

Kes came to and coughed up a wad of bloody phlegm, looked around the bedroom stupidly. _Woo, what the hell happened, I think my jaw is broken, and-EZRI!_

Her rage flared white-hot and the torn bed sheets that bound her exploded off her body, turned to atomized sparks, then Kes slowly got to her feet.

She stumbled out into the corridor, blood from a wide gash on her temple streaming down her face. She turned the corner and the two conversing guards saw her. Their eyes went wide, "High-Maje? But-but..." the first stammered.

"Take me...take me to medical..._now_, you...you idiots..." and she collapsed into their arms.

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

Ezri had made it as far as four decks away and then got badly lost, the Kazon ship was nearly as big as the _Equinox_. She turned a corner, desperate for some sort of computer access panel, and came face to face with a large, heavy door.

She couldn't read Kazon (_or was it Ocampan, no must be Kazon, too rough_), she had no tricorder, but the bright yellow stripes on the door set off warning bells in her head. But what choice did she have? She turned to the door panel and hit the open switch.

A klaxon sounded and the portal split and slid away, revealing a pitch-black room. Cold mist as high as her knees flowed outwards and she stepped inside, the portal closing behind her. She blinked a memorized pattern activating her thremo-contacts.

The chamber lit-up to reveal a long wall, with coffin like devices, each bubble-domed, all large. She stepped up to one of them and brushed frost from the glass. Within, a strange being lay in deep slumber. Stocky, with spots and whiskers, kind of humorous looking, she recorded a still image for identification with the EMH2, if she ever got the chance to see the Medical Hologram again.

_I'm starting to think that might be a big if..._

Ezri turned to go, this room was a bust, when a larger dome, apart from the others, caught her eye. A beacon pulsed above it's lid, as if to warn of dangerous contents. Intrigued despite her desperate need to get off the ship, she stepped up to it and brushed the frost away.

She gasped, the being within was huge. He was humanoid, similar to Trill or Terran, with defined vertical forehead ridges which descended down between his eyebrows. She cleared more frost away to reveal a powerfully muscled upper body dressed in a leather harness, and his hands were bound in heavy cuffs, "Should I?" she muttered under her breath as chills crept up her spine, "I really could use some help here. My enemy's enemy is my friend, right?"

She bit her lip and activated the access panel, looked simple enough. Less then a minute later the lid popped and slid down with a blast of air even colder then bay's chilly atmosphere. The muscled alien's eyes fluttered open, he coughed and rolled out of the sleep chamber, then onto the floor, gasping.

She leaned down and placed a hand on his shoulder, "You okay? I-" but got no farther as he suddenly leaped to his feet and grabbed her by the neck with both hands, and hauled her into the air!

"You won't get a second chance to play your mind tricks on me!" he growled, his voice low and menacing.

_The helmet, oh no! He thinks I'm Kes, got to get it off!_ "Guh, wait...ugh..." she managed to grunt out, as the strong alien began to slowly squeeze the life out of her, obviously relishing the chance.

Ezri managed to grab hold of her head gear and wrench it off. The helmet clanged to the floor and she began to fade, no air. The meager light from the open pod played across the face of the Trill, and the guy stopped in mid-strangle and leaned closer.

He tilted his head and arched a single sculpted eyebrow, "Who...are you?" then realized she might not be able to answer with him holding her up by the throat, so he lowered her back to the floor.

Ezri fell to her knees, circulation returning, and she dragged in ragged gasps of air. The alien turned and raised his fists, then smashed his manacles against the wall. The deck rang as he continued this over-and-over, then there was a metallic crack and they fell from his wrists. As he rubbed them to restore proper blood flow, Tigan got to her feet.

"What's your story? You buy me?" he asked, turning to stare down at her with interest.

"N-No..." she rasped, rubbing her at throat, "I was brought aboard this ship against my will and I need to escape, you want to come?"

"You got a ship?" he asked.

"Yeah, within beaming range, you know where the transporter is around here?" she asked, her voice back for the most part. But he shook his head and headed for the door.

"But I have ways of finding out." he grinned savagely, and from his confident tone, Ezri was pretty sure he would.

He reached the doors out as they slid open, revealing three angry-looking Kazon guards. They caught site of his massive figure, "Oh no! The Pendari is loose!" the first gasped and he went for the pistol on his hip.

The Pendari didn't give him a chance to draw it, but struck out with one hand, grabbed him by the face, and flipped him like nothing over his shoulder. He turned to the other two who were backing up real fast, as the tossed man hit the floor, head first, his neck snapping like a match-stick. Ezri ran forward and grabbed the pistol off the dead Kazon's belt, as her new alien ally snagged another guard.

He smashed him to the floor and then rammed a fist into the face of the third Kazon, sending him flying backwards into the corridor to collapse against the wall. Still holding the last remaining guard, he raised the Kazon in his fist and bellowed into his face, "Transporter! Where...is...it?"

Ezri stepped up beside him and smiled up at the Kazon. The Pendari glanced down at her and raised his eyebrow again, this woman was an enigma, he couldn't help but like her.

The Kazon couldn't give directions fast enough...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

Back on the _Equinox_, Captain Ransom came to the end of a narrow hallway and called out an order to the ship's computer. Another lift door hissed open, revealing a second shaft. He looked across it and made a second request, opening the portal opposite.

He leaped across, and caught Eleanor as she followed him, Luthrun after her. He shut the shaft and called for lights. The large room lit-up to reveal a duplicate to the Bridge, albeit with dust-covered panels, unmodified, still the original technology of more then a century ago. Eleanor looked around in surprise. Beyond the lower Bridge deck, to the left and right, stretched the ship's Computer Core.

Row-after-row of blinking, humming and pulsing machinery, controlling and maintaining all ship's operations lay before her eyes, "Why is this not on the schematics?" she demanded, raising her padd, as Ransom stepped to the Helm/Navigation station.

"I wrote those schematics." he replied and gave the command to release the lockout on this, the Auxiliary Bridge.

"That is what I would do." stated the Talarian with respect, and he stepped up to the upper deck and activated the Science Station, "Secrets can save lives, most importantly your own."

"Ransom to Gilmore." the Captain slapped his combadge, trying again, _come on Marla..._

There was a pause, then Marla's voice echoed through the chamber, "_Gilmore here, it's great to hear your voice, sir, where are you?_"

"Never mind that, go to secured channel Beta-6." he tapped a sequence into his badge, which hissed, then cleared, "Marla?"

"_You're coming through loud and clear, sir_." came her voice.

"Ship's status?" he demanded, bringing the Helm online.

"_Warp engines are working, as are phasers and Impulse. I'm sealed in Engineering with about half the crew, and I managed to erect a force field before you activated the lockout._" she paused, and Ransom thought for a second.

"The shields?" he asked, fearing the answer.

"_Thirty-six percent, I might be able to get some more if you could release my terminals. We've performed what other repairs we could. So how about my consoles?_" she asked, but Ransom still didn't answer.

"_Eleanor. Go to Environmental_." he ordered and the woman stepped to the Station, activated it, "Status of security systems?"

"Working." she read from the displays.

"Access Security Protocol R-12." he ordered, she did so, and a three-dimensional image of the _Equinox_ appeared on one display, "Isolate Auxiliary Bridge and Engineering. Then bring the tanks online."

"Tanks?" asked Luthrun, stepping up beside Eleanor, she glanced up at him, "The Captain wants me to release Plyrozene gas into the ship. It should, with luck, put the Kazon to sleep for hours."

"Should..." stated Ransom cooly, then turned to the command chair and hit a direct comlink to Sickbay, "Doctor, are you there?"

"_It's about time_." came the nasal voice of the perturbed hologram.

"Not now, Doctor, I need information. Are the Kazon susceptible to Plyrozene gas?" Ransom asked.

There was a pause, then the EMH2 asked "_Plyrozene gas? What's that? I know every chemical compound that exists in three Quadrants, you made that up._"

"Doctor!" roared Ransom, "Look it up in the medical database, I'll release your lockout." and he did.

"_Ah, yes, well what do you know, this must be new. In the future, Captain, I really need to be updated on any new-_" hastily began the Hologram, but a growl from Ransom made him switch gears, "_Checking...ah, yes, this compound should immobilize a Kazon for up to five hours, sir._"

"Good, Ransom out." and he closed the link, then contacted Gilmore, told her to sit tight, he'd call her back, then ended the communication.

"Do it, Eleanor." he ordered, returning to the helm.

Luthrun turned back to the Science Officer, "How do you activate it?" he asked.

"Oh, it's very easy, it's ready to go. I just have to press this red button." she said.

He stared at her, but she made no move toward it, "So...do it." he said.

"Hmmm, I don't think so." she replied, and raised her rifle to point at the Talarian's chest.

"This is for shoving me into that tree." she said, then with a grim smile she shot the shocked Talarian point blank, and he vanished in a flare of energy.

She swung around fast and pointed the rifle at Ransom, who had just turned around himself in surprise at the sound of the weapons fire.

"Eleanor? What-" he demanded, but she adjusted the Klingon disruptor and blasted him with a stun beam.

Rudy collapsed to his knees, gasping, and tried to draw his pistol. Eleanor strode down, pulled it from his weak fingers, and kicked him in the jaw. He shot backwards and crashed into the helm. She pulled manacles from her uniform jacket and snapped then around one of his wrists, then dragged him to the Bridge railing, behind and to the left of the command chair.

She locked his arms around a post, then straightened, confident that her Captain wasn't going any where. She turned and pulled the Kazon comlink, which she had acquired earlier, from her jacket and activated it.

"_Equinox_ to the _Fury_, come in _Fury_." she called.

There was a blast of static, then "_Rajal here, who is this?_" demanded the High-Maje's Second over the comlink.

"This is a member of Captain Ransom's crew. I have a proposition for you." she stepped back up to the Communications console and tied the Kazon link into the Auxiliary viewscreen.

It came on to reveal an angry looking Kazon who stared at her in suspicion, "Who are you?" he demanded.

"On this ship I am Chief Science Officer Eleanor Bentley." she said.

"We Kazon make no deals with Terrans." snarled Rajal, and she laughed, "What?" he asked, confused.

"Don't let my cosmetic surgery fool you, I'm no Terran." she said, "I am an undercover operative for the Alliance, the sworn enemy of all Terrans. I am not Terran, but of a superior race called Cardassian."

She leaned forward, grasping the rail, and said "My name is Seska..."

**To be continued...**


	12. Chapter XII

**Chapter XII - Among Dark Adversarie**s

_In orbit around the Bolaris Minor Sun..._

The fires no longer burned across the hull of the starship _Equinox_, but a different kind of inferno was about to ignite within. Captain Rudulf Ransom stood in the Brig of _his_ vessel, arms folded, the picture of calm, as a Kazon trooper stood guard. Within though, Rudy was livid, and if he had even a tenth of the power the Ocampa warlord Kes had demonstrated, every Kazon on board would be lobotomized by now.

_Plus a certain Science Officer__..._

The door slid open and the traitorous Science Officer in question strode in, still carrying the Klingon rifle he had given her. She ignored him and spoke in quiet tones with the Kazon guard. _Oh yeah, and if I had the mental ability, she would be drowning in her own stomach acid_. Rudy clamped down on these thoughts, they were getting him nowhere, and they might cause him to make a stupid mistake, to act before he should.

_Eleanor, or was it Seska? Yes, that was the name she had stated to the Second Officer of the Fury, I was partially stunned at the time, but I remember. Seska, a Cardassian spy? Never saw that one coming, but maybe I should have, maybe I was too distracted by...by..._and he winced at the image of Ezri that appeared in his mind. She was dead now and he needed to concentrate, _my god, she's even more distracting deceased then when she was alive,_ Rudy thought to himself.

"Is that how you see me?" came Ezri's voice from the cell's bunk and he turned to see her lounging there.

She wore her favorite shirt, the one he had given her when they had first met, in the slave pits aboard that awful Klingon ship, the _Bok'ra_. Loth the Changeling had inadvertently used it to wrap the symbiont pod, when he rescued it from the burning Klingon ship he had been imprisoned aboard. Ezri had laundered it, patched the rips, and wore it when they were alone in Rudy's quarters. But usually not for long...

"What?" asked the nymph-like Trill, glancing down at the many sizes too large garment, "You're not going to complain about it again are you?"

He sat down beside her and smiled tightly, "No, I remember what you told me the last time."

"That's right. This was the best present I ever got, it means the galaxy to me. You have your starship, and I have my shirt." Ezri said proudly and her eyes flashed in the way that made him forget everything else.

"But what about all those gadgets you have concealed about your person?" he asked, "You go nowhere without them."

"They are part of me, I would not still be here without them, but this shirt is not a part of me..." and she paused and slid onto her bare knees, and leaned slowly toward him, "...It's a part of you. I love you Rudy..."

His heart lurched, "I...love you too, Ezri, why did you have to go, I should have sent Noah, or-" but the girl shook her head, her tousled hair askew, she was so young, why him? Why was he so lucky to have been chosen by her?

"You and I both know it had to be me. And you couldn't have stopped me anyway. Now I'm sorry, Rudy, but I've got to go." he reached for her, but the illusion was gone.

He was alone in the cell, he had only imagined she had come back to him. Inside him, the last shred of optimism died. He now understood the look on Ezri's face as she was led away from him back on Ty'Gokor, to fight in the arena. Now he too had resolved himself to defeating his enemies, no matter what the cost.

"Ransom!" came the shrill voice of Seska, and he snapped his head in her direction, she sounded angry.

She smiled arrogantly at him, "Dreaming of your precious Olympia Prime?" she asked, but he only stared back at her.

"Bring him to the Conference Room." she ordered, and strode out of the Security Office...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

Onboard the Kazon-Ocampa Sodality flagship, things were already heated, and threatening to boil over. The ship's physician was booted away from the examination bed, and High-Maje Kes pivoted to the side, then slid off, onto wobbly feet. She grabbed the injector tube from the Doctor's tray.

"Maje, I do not recommend..." began the flustered Talaxian physician, but he clamed up at her wild eyes.

Kes set the tube for it's strongest stimulant and injected herself. She sighed, then her back arched, her chest expanded, and she gritted her teeth, that was the stuff! She dropped the device onto the floor and stormed from the room, feeling strong once more.

Her Kazon Second, Rajal, was waiting for her, grasping a data-padd, and he matched her pace down the corridor, "I am pleased the High-Maje is recuperated, we feared you would be unable to continue to lead the mission, but-"

Kes spun and grabbed him by the neck. Despite the fact he was more then a head taller then her minuscule form, he shrunk back against the wall. She stared into his eyes with a look of pure disgust, "You would have liked that, wouldn't you have, huh, Rajal! You have been out to trip me up ever since I proposed this incursion."

"N-N-No! What do you mean-of course not, I-" the words streamed from him, but her eyes flashed and he felt his body temperature begin to rise.

"You were the one who brought that thing, that spotted alien _whore_ onboard MY ship. You wanted her to kill me, you must of struck a deal while she was in my quarters!" she increased her power and his flesh began to glow, his hair began to steam.

"It's not true, no! I-I have stood loyally by your side, since we met on the surface of Ocampa, you know that!" he begged, then suddenly her grip lessened, and the heat vanished.

Kes released him and shrunk back, hands to her temples, and she groaned. Rajal took a deep breath, sweat pouring down his face and back. He stared at his mistress, and for the first time since he had met her, he began to doubt her. Perhaps he should make plans to..._no, she is our savior, she pulled us up from barbaric obscurity, she united the Sects, she..._

...she was insane, for the first time he allowed himself to see it. And she was getting worse. His hand stole to the ceremonial dagger on his belt, ever so slowly.

Kes's head swam, the drugs plus her concussion, she was over-exerted. But she called upon hidden reserves now, utilizing methods her father had taught her, and everything began to clear. She rose to her full height, her mind centered and became crystal again. The pain dropped away.

She would pay for it dearly in a day or so, but for now...for now, she was ready to finish what they started. She glanced back at Rajal, who was looking very nervous, and he abruptly jammed his hands in his belt and smiled nervously, "...Maje?" he asked slowly.

She placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled, "My apologies, I was not myself, I know you are my most loyal servant." and she released him and headed back up the hallway, headed for the Command Center, "Come on, and tell me about this woman, Seska."

Rajal stared after her for a long moment, then followed...

**\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

Ezri Tigan glanced around the corner, then she and the tall Pendari stepped out and strode down the corridor, confidently.

The door ahead slid open and the two of them stepped out onto a catwalk that looked down four stories into the hollowed-out cargo deck of the_ KOS Fury_. Far below sat a bizarre apparatus, all twisted gray metal, yellow pulsing conduits, and solar-panel like protrusions. From it issued a low hum, and Ezri guessed the apparatus was in standby mode.

"I've seen something like this before." said the Pendari, staring down at the device, "It's Nacene technology."

Ezri nodded, realization dawning, "This must be what the Kazon used to invade our part of the galaxy. Hmmm..." she paused, deep in thought, then surmised, "I bet this device is the only one they have, that's why Kes has kept the _Fury_ out of most of the combat so far."

"So...we destroy it, or what?" asked the Pendari, but Ezri was unsure, then the door at the other end of the catwalk opened and a group of Kazon appeared, saw them, charged.

Ezri drew her disruptor as the muscled warrior ran forward to meet their attackers, then she realized that in such close quarters they were at a bad disadvantage. So she turned to open the door for an exit, but it opened by itself to reveal a tall Kazon holding a dagger. He grinned down at her, a look of brutality in his eyes. She holstered her weapon and drew a knife of her own, "Bring it on." she hissed and he leapt at her.

The Pendari was among the troopers before they could even draw their weapons, and he chopped one in the neck and body-checked two others. One managed to land a punch across his jaw,and he was knocked back, blood on his lips. The Pendari glared at the Kazon, who's own eyes went wide, and he took a step back, "Oh no, you're not going anywhere I don't send you." growled the strong-man and he charged.

He piledrived the Kazon in the chest, smiled at the sound of crunching ribs, grabbed him by the tunic and spun, smashing him into the wall. There came a sharp burning pain in his upper leg and he spun to see another trooper had slashed him with his knife and the Kazon was now raising it to stab him in the chest. The Pendari swung the stunned trooper he held and knocked the knife-wielder over the catwalk, to plunge screaming to the floor far below. He dropped his make-shift weapon after him and turned back to see how Tigan was doing.

She ducked under a slash, then blocked another, and planted a kick in the tall Kazon's stomach, but he rolled with it and grabbed her foot. He pulled her forward, off balance, and she fell toward his dagger. At the last second she swung out and caught the catwalk railing and dropped her own knife to grab the blade of his, stopping her fall.

The trooper tore the knife away, but she managed to open her hand in time, the Kazon nearly lacerating her palm. She lashed out with the now free hand and used it to grab the railing, beside her other. She swung her lithe form into the air and smashed him with her free foot across the jaw! It snapped with a crack and he released her. He fell against the wall, grunting in pain.

The Trill dropped to the catwalk, grabbed up her dagger, snapped back and threw it at him. It whirred through the air and buried itself to the hilt in his windpipe. He gurgled and slumped down onto the gridded walkway, dead.

Ezri rose and the Pendari clapped in approval. She ignored him as she wrenched her knife free from the Kazon and cleaned it on his uniform. She picked the alien's own knife from his dead fingers, and then slid both in her belt. She looked at the Pendari, who was smiling at her, "What, you never saw a lady fight before?"

He chuckled, "You're good, Spots, almost at my level." she smiled back and grabbed up a dropped disruptor and offered it to him, but he shook his head, "Never use them, not while I got these." he raised his meaty fists.

"Yeah, you seem to get along pretty good with them." she remarked.

He crooked one side of his mouth and looked her up and down, then said, "They have other abilities I'm well known for, other then combat, you know."

Ezri laughed, "I'll bet. But sorry, I'm spoken for." the Pendari shrugged, as if to say her loss, and she laughed again, "Come on, lets get down to the cargo deck, I have an idea." and she swung over the railing and grabbed onto a ladder...

**To be continued...**


	13. Chapter XIII

**Chapter XIII - A Man for All Seasons**

On the Command Deck of her flagship, Kes angrily slammed her fists on the arm rests of her throne-like command chair, "You're sure Tigan could not have left the _Fury_?" demanded the High-Maje, and Rajal shook his head.

"There has been no use of the transporter, believe me, it's a huge drain on our warp core, we'd have noticed." he replied, consulting the Scanner console, "And all shuttles are accounted for. She's still here. She has to be."

Rajal paused for a moment, liked his lips, then with worried eyes, asked, "Maje...forgive me for asking, but should you not be able to detect the Trill onboard? I mean, do you not have the...the means?"

Kes glared at him, "Yes, I have the means." she balled her hands into fists and scowled at the viewscreen, on which the _Equinox_ hung in space, "And I have attempted to locate her. But if she is still on board, she is blocking me somehow, I know not how."

Rajal's eyes went wide, "Blocking you, that is possible? But-But you're so _powerful_! I thought there was no way..." then he shut-up, Kes had turned and was looking at him strangely.

"She is but one alien woman, why have your Security troopers not located her? The _Fury_ is not that big." she spat back at him.

He blanched, "Ah, well, you see, with half our men on the _Equinox_, and the other escape-"

"Other escape? What other escape?" she demanded.

"Ah, heh, yes... You see, the Pendari Champion we acquired from the Vidiians, he escaped from his stasis chamber and is now roaming the ship...ah...perhaps released during battle, somehow." replied Rajal.

Kes sniffed, it did not matter, the Pendari was no match for her powers, "Well, hopefully the two of them will encounter one another. He is a berzerker, he'll kill her on sight. That would solve the problem nicely." and then she turned back to the viewscreen as the image changed and a Terran woman appeared on it.

"_Greetings, High-Maje._" the woman said, "_I am Seska of the Cardassian Obsidian Order._"

She sat at the head of a conference table in a meeting room on the _Equinox_, a Kazon standing on either side of her, though a respected meter back. Seska smiled at Rajal over the link, and he nodded gruffly back. The High-Maje observed this and narrowed her eyes.

Kes regarded the woman with suspicion from the screen, "_So... You are the so-called representative of a distant power who claim to have conquered my Imperial enemies for me._"

Seska nodded, smiling, and opened her mouth to speak, but Kes continued on, "_Why should I believe you? This is most likely a Terran trick, I shall have my men execute you_." and she raised a hand to her men on the Equinox, but Seska shook her head violently.

"No, Maje! Believe me, it's true, I can prove it!" she begged as the guards drew knives and stepped forward.

Seska reached into a pocket of her jacket and withdrew a hypospray, "Let me show you." she said, and Kes signaled the men to hold for a moment.

Seska closed her eyes and injected herself with the device. Nothing happened for a long moment, then her skin pebbled at the point on her neck where she had inserted the hypopray. Her facial features hardened slightly, and the skin alteration spread across her face and neck.

She grunted in pain and thrashed in her seat, as eyebrow ridges, along with ones that went up the sides of her forehead, appeared abruptly. An oval-shaped protrusion appeared in the middle of her forehead, and then the transformation stopped.

Seska gasped and opened her eyes, "There, the nanite serum I prepared has repaired some of the alterations to my appearance. It will only last for a few hours, then I will revert back to Terran. Though over time and with surgery I will be completely Cardassian again. Physically. Mentally, though, on the inside where it truly counts, I never ceased to be one of my people." she said proudly.

Kes smiled, "_All right, you have my attention. So, what can you do to aid me?_"

"I have ended the paltry uprising on this ship, and handed it over to your men. Believe me, if I had not acted, the Captain here would be in control once more." she gestured to the manacled Ransom who sat to her left, a Kazon behind him, weapon at the ready.

Kes nodded, "_Rajal has related to you what information I require?_" she asked, and Seska nodded.

"The man you seek is named Pike, Captain Christopher Pike." replied the Cardassian, "But there was nothing in the _Equinox_'s databanks concerning him. He must be long dead by now, anyhow."

On her Command Deck, Kes leaned forward, eyes gleaming, "No. He is not dead. My people encountered him many generations ago, and what he did to us formed a link, one that has been passed down, all the way to me."

She paused, then said to Seska on the screen "I could sense his continued existence from my home world, it was like a tiny itch you cannot scratch, and I used it to target this section of space with our acquired technology. He is nearby, I can sense him much stronger now."

"_Pike is dead, assassinated by Tiberius, long before he became the last Emperor of the Terran Empire, long before it fell._" said Ransom, speaking for the first time, "_You maybe sense his descendants_."

Kes fixed him with an suspicious stare and opened her mind. On the viewscreen, Ransom flinched, his eyes went wide, as she dug into his brain, flipping through information like peeling an onion. He breathed hard and blood appeared on his lips. Then Kes released him and he shrunk back into his chair.

"Part of what you say is true, but you are treacherous like all Terrans, you twist facts to hide your crimes." she said, her voice as cold as space itself, "Pike lives, and he is on your homeworld. And I sense there is a large population there, mostly of Terrans, living free."

She turned back to Seska, "I thought you said you conquered and enslaved all Terrans."

Seska stared back at her from the display, "_Some, a tiny few, have managed to evade us, that is why I was dispatched to infiltrate this Terran's ship to discover the coordinates of his world Olympia Prime, and then report them back to my superiors._"

"Where is it?" Kes demanded, she was so close to her goal, she could feel it.

Seska shook her head, "_The computers here are encrypted, I cannot extract it. Only the Captain can. I was hoping with your abilities_-"

"No_._" interrupted Kes abruptly, "I have already extended myself too far, that kind of ability is not possible right now. You must have ways of obtaining what we need. You seem like a capable woman."

Seska nodded and the High-Maje smiled thinly, "Good, I give you one hour, then if you don't have it, my men will cut off your limbs and eject your torso into the asteroid belt. Kes out_._" and she severed the link.

Kes sat back in her command-throne and steepled her fingers, deep in thought. Then she decided and turned to Rajal, who jumped to attention, "When she obtains the coordinates for this Olympia Prime, execute Ransom. And Seska."

Rajal nodded, then returned his attention to his console...

******\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

The Cardassian female stared down at the Terran male, as he lay strapped to the bio-bed in the _Equinox_'s sickbay. He stared back defiantly, "Don't bother, I won't tell you the release codes." he said.

Seska smiled, the grin of a hungry shark, and selected a laser scalpel from the tray of instruments, "Oh, I think very soon you'll beg me for the opportunity to reveal all your secrets." the Sickbay doors slid open and a Kazon entered carrying a case.

"Oh good, my surprise is here." Seska said, taking the case she had sent the trooper to fetch from it's hiding place in her quarters.

She set it down on the table beside the biobed and opened it. She removed a vile of emerald liquid and fitted it into a hypospray. The EMH2 appeared in bright twist of photonic light and the Kazon jumped in fear, drawing his weapon. Seska waved him back and glared at the Hologram, "Not now, Doctor, I'm busy."

"I have not authorized any medical procedures and you are not in my database as a licensed practitioner. Please desist or I will be forced to call Security." the Photonic being intoned.

Seska laughed, "Computer deactivate the EMH2." she ordered and he vanished, then she turned back to face Ransom, who struggled against his bonds, "Now, if there are no more interruptions, this will probably really hurt. But then your mind will slowly turn to the consistency of Breen slurry. And you will tell me everything, every little secret."

She tapped a sequence into the hypo and reached forward, but before she could reach Ransom's neck, there came another photonic flash, the EMH2 was right beside her! He grabbed Seska's wrist in a painful grip, "Maybe I didn't make myself clear the first time." he said, all politeness gone, and with inhuman strength wrenched her arm up and lifted her into the air.

The Kazon on guard roared, drew his weapon and fired point-blank into the Hologram's chest, but the beam passed right through him and exploded into a wall screen. It shattered and burst into sparks. The Kazon's jaw dropped in astonishment. Ransom roared from the biobed, "Doctor, release me!"

The EMH2 glanced at Seska, who clawed at his rock-solid grip in agony, to no avail, then he announced, "Sickbay computer, release the restraints on biobed three." and the Captain jumped to his feet, the belts unlocked.

Head down he charged into the Kazon, butting him in the stomach! The trooper doubled over and fell to his knees. Ransom rose and swung his intertwined fists upside the alien's head, knocking him into the wall. Satisfied that the Kazon was out of the way he whirled on the now screaming Seska and ordered the Doctor to release her. She fell to the deck, cradling her hand, and Ransom grabbed her by the hair.

"I should kill you." he snarled, but instead grabbed up her fallen hypospray.

"Captain!" shouted the Hologram, taking a step forward, but Ransom shook his head, reprogrammed the injector and as Seska tried to get away, sprayed a strong sedative into her neck.

She collapsed to the floor and Ransom straightened up. The doctor looked at him down his narrow nose with disapproval, "Well, you _are_ in my database as an approved medic, but..."

"Drop it, Doctor, we're wasting time." then Ransom grabbed the hologram's hand, and shook it.

The EMH2 looked at him in confusion, "I want to apologize, I was wrong about you." admitted the Captain, "Ezri was right, it was an incredibly good call installing you. I would be honored if you would become the _Equinox_'s official Chief Medical Officer."

To his amazement the EMH2 blushed and smiled, "Thank you." he said, and Ransom released his hand.

The Captain grabbed up the Kazon's pistol and knife, then turned to go, but stopped, "Wait. There's something weird going on with you. Doctor, I distinctly remember hearing at the personnel meeting that you only had holoprojectors installed here, the Conference Room, Engineering and the Mess. How did you project yourself on the Bridge. And how did you manage to turn yourself back on after Seska deactivated you?"

The curly-haired hologram looked at him in confusion, "What do you mean? After I was left alone with the dead Kazon, I took the time to familiarize myself with the _Equinox_'s systems. I just integrated myself with the alternate communications network that you have."

Ransom stared at him in confusion, "Alternate network?"

"It was very strange, of alien design mostly, but I am very adaptive. There are some other applications of the system I'm still studying." said the thin Hologram, "With it I can go everywhere onboard. It even has it's own power source, completely independent of the ship."

Ransom just stared at him, so the EMH2 went to the Sickbay command console and entered a sequence on the keypad. A three-dimensional blue image of the ship appeared, and a strange spider-web of pathways pulsed in red among nearly every inch of it. All lines seemed to converge on one point in the Crew Quarters. Ransom frowned, "That's my quarters." he said, pointing to the hub.

The EMH2 nodded, "Yes, that's where the control apparatus is located. You were unaware of this network?" Ransom shook his head, "Unsurprising, as it's designed that way, and very easy to miss. I only stumbled across it. The computer files concerning it are sealed."

Ransom barked his command codes to the computer, the files appeared on the screen and he read their headings, "Tantalus Field...?"

_What the hell is a Tantalus Field?_

But that line of questioning was put away for now as an idea began to form in the Captain's head, "Doctor, just how adaptive are you?"

The Hologram looked at him curiously.

******\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

On the Bridge of the _Equinox_, four Kazon clustered around the Helm station, arguing loudly, "No! _This_ is the Impulse systems control, you fool!" shouted the one in command.

"You are an idiot, _that_ is the automatic flight pad, do you know nothing?" snapped a younger Officer, causing his commander to draw his knife. He stepped to the middle of the deck.

"Call me that again, Valtis, just do it." he hissed, and Valtis drew his own blade.

"I killed a Hirogen to gain my name, you will not be a challenge, Harkel." said the younger Kazon and he moved in, swinging his knife.

The duel had barely begun when the turbolift slid open and they all looked toward it, and froze in fear. For Kes, their High-Maje, stood glaring down at them.

The blonde Ocampa, splendid in her gleaming brown leather armor, strode onto the deck and glowered at the bleeding Harkel, "Have I interrupted something?" she asked, and he shook his head so hard his neck cracked, "I better not have." and the Ocamapa sat down in the Captain's chair.

"Leave me!" she ordered, "And report to the Hanger Deck. All troopers are being evacuated back to the _Fury_."

"Maje?" asked Harkel in confusion.

She glared at him, "I have decided to destroy this abomination. Would you like to be on the _Equinox_ when it goes up?" and they all shook they're heads no and headed for the lift.

"You!" she called, pointing to Harkel, she gestured to his bleeding shoulder and got to her feet.

Kes went to the upper deck, and pulled an emergency medkit from the wall. She extracted a tissue-regenerator and grasping the shocked Harkel's arm, she turned ithe medical device on and sealed the laceration. She released him and glared at them all, "Go!"

The Kazon fell over themselves piling into the lift, and vanished down to the Hanger Bay. The Ocampa sighed and shook herself. There was a flash of photonic energy and the High-Maje morphed into the form of the blond EMH2.

He tapped his combadge, "Doctor to Ransom, it worked, the Bridge is clear."

"_Understood doctor. I have created a list of the locations of the other Kazon on board and am transmitting it to the Science Station. Take care of the rest of them, and hurry._" replied Ransom over the link and the Hologram went to the readout.

He memorized it, turned, morphed back to his Kes projection, and vanished...

**To be continued...**


	14. Chapter XIV

**Chapter XIV - Death or Something Like It**

_In the Secondary Hull of the starship_ Equinox_..._

In Engineering, Chief Engineer Marla Gilmore looked up from her command console, where she stood with most of her Engineers. She glanced at the main exit doors and listened for a moment to the sound of disruptors being fired into the force field that protected the door.

She glanced back down at the display and frowned, "Four percent, they'll be in here in less then three minutes."

She nodded to the seven crewman who stood waiting at either side of the doors. Some had half-dead disruptors, others pipes. It was all they had. Marla had no illusions about what was about to happen in her Engineering. The Kazon would be plenty angry and she had only twenty-nine people. It would be a slaughter.

The monitor dropped to two percent, "Everyone get ready. This is it." from the console she picked up the knife she had taken off a fallen Kazon and hefted it.

Then, amazingly, with the shield at 0.8 percent power, the firing stopped and everyone in the room ceased to breath. They all listened at the sound of muted Kazon voices in the corridor, then there came the sound of booted footsteps, which dwindled, and then were gone.

All heads turned to her, but the flaxen-haired Terran did not know what to make of the situation. Then there came a knocking on the wall, and without thinking, Marla answered, "Yes?"

"I say, open up in there! All clear out here." came the impossible voice of the Holographic Doctor.

"It's got to be a trick." hissed her assistant and Marla nodded agreement.

"Nice try, boys." she called to the corridor, "You guys get points for creativity, but we Terrans weren't born yesterday."

There came a sigh from the hallway, then a light flashed on the deck directly in front of her console and the EMH2 appeared, arms folded. He glared at the Chief Engineer.

"How the heck did you do that?" Marla demanded, "I took the holo-emitter in here off-line, we needed it's power."

The Photonic smiled smugly, "No time for that now, all the Kazon should be on the Hanger Deck by now, I have to go there and see them off."

"See...them...off..." repeated Marla slowly and she cocked an eye at him, he must be malfunctioning.

He saluted smartly and vanished.

"_Ransom to Gilmore, have you spoken to the Doctor?_" came the sudden voice of the Captain over her combadge and she jumped.

"Uh, yes, sir, he just left. Rudy what in the hell is-" she started to ask but he cut her off.

"_No time. How are the weapons and shields?_" he demanded and she glanced at her readouts.

"Um, let's see, I can have the shields regenerated to eighty percent within ten minutes, and we have all weapons back on line, but phaser power is limited." she answered, "Oh and you can forget about going to Warp for at least six hours."

"_I want the shields up to par in five minutes. The Kazon are going to figure out our deception really fast. We have to be ready._" replied Ransom, "_Marla, do you have anyone down there who can man a Helm or Tactical?_"

She glanced around and two people nodded, "Yes. I'll send them up right now. Where's Noah and Gill?" she asked.

"_Unavailable. Send them up now._" he ordered and they headed for the doors, which her people were now un-sealing.

Marla pursed her lips and took a deep breath, then got up the nerve to ask, "Rudy...any news on Ezri?"

There was no response. Marla hung her head, "...Rudy, I'm sorry, if there's-"

"_Engineer, get on those shields, now._" he said over the link and she recognized the tone, clammed up in response.

He severed the channel.

******\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

In the Cargo Bay of the Sodality flagship, Ezri closed a panel on the apparatus and turned to the Pendari. He was standing on guard by the Bay entrance. Three dead Kazon lay in a pile beside him, unfortunate intruders.

"You done?" the Pendari asked and she shrugged.

"I think it'll work, but we've got to go. This technology is weird, but I think I got it right." she drew her pistol and stepped with him into the corridor.

They headed down the hallway, turned a corner and spied a lift at the far end. They headed into it and he scanned the keypad, selected the deck the Kazon had said the transporter was on.

The car shot upwards and he closed his eyes, centering his mind on the task up ahead. He was bruised and cut, with a bad weapon burn on his side. He was trained in pit fighting, this guerrilla combat was wearing him down. Even he, the Pendari Champion, could not kill _everyone_ on this ship. But he would give it his all, if that was what it took to get off.

His eyes opened, as Ezri had grabbed his arm, "What?" he asked annoyed, she was messing with his mojo.

"This is taking too long, we should have reached the proper deck by now, but we're still moving." the Trill said, a tremor beginning in her voice.

He hit the emergency stop pad but nothing happened. He grabbed the panel and wrenched it from the car wall. Ezri stepped up and reached for the circuitry, but a small force field snapped on, keeping her out. And at the back of her mind she began to feel something.

"Oh, no..." she whispered and the Pendari stared at her, for the first time worry appearing on his face.

"I thought you said your mental shields could hide you from her." he frowned as she rubbed her temples.

"They should be able to, Kes is a powerful telepath, but has no discipline, has no experience with someone being able to form a mental block. But it seems she's a quick learner." replied Ezri, and the presence poking at her psyche increased, "We better-"

The lift abruptly stopped and slid open to reveal a squad of Kazon, weapons pointed into the car. The Pendari took a step forward,and was shot in the chest with a heavy stun blast. He grunted and stumbled to his knees, then fell to the floor, unmoving.

"Out!" ordered the lead Kazon and Ezri raised her hands, dropping her pistol. She strode past the troopers onto the deck and looked around, while they hauled the big man after her.

She was on the large oval-shaped Command Deck of the _Fury_. She folded her arms and turned toward the center of the chamber.

A large and high-backed golden throne-like command chair sat on a raised dais, it's back to her. Then it slowly swiveled around to face her and Kes, the High-Maje of the fleet, leaned forward and smiled at the Trill with a grin that would impress a jackal.

"Ah, Ezri, how nice of you to finally join us. I trust you've enjoyed your little jaunt around my ship." she said sarcastically.

Ezri smiled back at her contritely, "Sorry about your crew, but as the Terran saying goes, crap happens."

Kes glared, then caught herself, "How vulgar. Well, it was all for nothing. I still have your battleship, and I never lost you."

She turned back to face the viewscreen, "Well your Science Officer Seska's time is up. Shall we see if she managed to extract the location of Olympia Prime from your precious Captain?" she hit a key on her armrest and the view of the surrounded _Equinox_ disappeared to reveal the ship's Conference Room.

But it was empty.

Ezri was too confused not to ask, "Seska? Who is Seska?" then on the screen the door opened and the Cardassian ran in. She smiled sheepishly at them.

"_Sorry!_" she said, and sat down at the table.

Tigan stared in shock at the bizarre change that had overtaken the Terran science officer. She looked almost Cardassian. What the heck was going on?

"You are late, traitor." growled the High-Maje, "You had better have not disappointed me."

But Seska raised a padd, holding it up triumphantly, "No, no! I have it, the Captain was no match for my amazing surgical skills!"

_That sounds like Eleanor Bently_, thought Ezri to herself, _but the tone isn't right, this is getting even weirder, if at all possible..._

Kes glared at the woman across the screen, "Well? Transmit the data."

Seska inserted the padd into a receptacle in the table and sent the data directly to the _Fury_'s computer through the open comm portal that Kes had arranged, "I recommend sending the data to your entire fleet. They can converge on the Olympia System and lay waste to all the silly humans." said Seska excitedly.

Kes nodded and signaled Rajal, who began the transfer. She paused then, _wait a minute, what did the Cardassian say?_ "Human? What is a human?" she demanded.

Seska's eyes went wide, "_Oh, I mean Terrans! Humans, Terrans, they're the same thing, hah, hah..._" she trailed off and Kes narrowed her eyes in suspicion, then reached out with her mental power to touch the Cardassian's mind.

And found nothing. It was like there was no one there. Something was very wrong. She spun in her chair to face her Second.

"Rajal, stop the transfer!" she shouted and the older Kazon looked up in confusion.

"What, Maje? But I already sent it to the bulk of the fleet waiting outside of the asteroid belt. I was about to send it to the ships with us." he said, then his eyes went wide and his hands were a blur, calling back to the armada.

"This is Second Rajal, do not open that file! Repeat, do not open that file!" he shouted, but over the comlink came the sound of explosions.

Kes jumped to her feet, "Give me a view outside the belt!" she growled.

Seska vanished from the screen to reveal the double line of fifty Kazon Juggernaut-Class vessels. They lay in wait outside the Bolaris Minor System and as Kes watched in horrified trepidation, one of the ship's shuddered and broke formation, twisting sideways. It rammed into the side of another bullet-shaped Kazon ship and then it burst into a golden and scarlet fireball, engulfing two others.

Plasma fires crackled over the rest and they all began to spin out of formation, then four detonated simultaneously and the entire fleet went up! The ship that was transmitting the image overloaded and the viewscreen dissolved into static.

Kes whirled on Rajal, the question painted all over her expression. He examined his monitors, then did so again. He raised his head slowly and met her gaze. He slowly shook his head.

"...But..." the High-Maje managed to say, in near total shock.

Rajal's expression slowly changed, moving from sadness to angry resolve. He drew his disruptor and pointed it at the petite Ocampa, "You have failed, bitch, and led us to ruin. I curse the day I ever set my gaze upon you, and was a fool for EVER aligning myself with you." he squeezed the trigger.

But Kes screamed at the top of her lungs, igniting her abilities, and the pistol exploded in Rajal's hand, vaporizing it up to the elbow. Blood, tissue and shards of charred bone rained down on the scanning console, "How dare you!" the Ocampa screamed and thrust her hands forward.

Rajal grasped his ruined appendage and stood his ground. He turned his head slowly away from his Commanding Officer and closed his eyes. He burst into white flame and collapsed to the deck, an inferno, consuming all of him. To his immense credit, Ezri never heard him even moan, then he was gone.

Kes stood rigid, still gesturing at him, breathing heavy, a look of naked hatred on her face. But to her shock she actually heard laughter and she pivoted around to face the Trill, dressed in her spare brown leather armor.

Ezri clutched her sides and waves of chuckling emanated from her. She saw that Kes had noticed her, so she slowly stopped and wiped her eyes, "Sorry, but you look like a horny Aldarian Rock Lizard when you stand like that."

"You..._dare_...mock ME?" the Ocampa nearly screamed.

"Why not? Who deserves it more, you psychotic bitch." Ezri spat back at her, "Oh yeah, the virus that destroyed your fleet? I created it. Captain Ransom just must have modified it to effect Kazon technology. Our Doctor knows tons about your species and them. He comes from a parallel Universe in which you haven't taken control of the Kazon sects."

"What? Impossible!" wailed the confused and enraged woman.

"Nope. All true. You're an empath, you'd know if I was lying, I'm not blocking that part of my mind." Ezri replied smugly, "Oh, yeah, you didn't know I could do that, did you? Hah, pathetic."

She continued, "In the other reality, your duplicate is a happy little Ocampa, sweet and helpful. She's a Nurse and florist, and she's married to a Talaxian chef."

"No..." stammered the Ocamapa, her eyes filling with tears, her mind tumbling from her, but she knew Ezri told the truth.

"Our Hologram has extensive files on her and many other occupants of the Delta Quadrant, and the psyche profile for Kes was very detailed. You share many of the same traits." Ezri continued to browbeat the woman and at the same time she slowly grasped the hilts of her knives.

"She is young, just as you are, just a child mentally, just like you. But where she is loving and loyal, you are spoiled and twisted. Just like she loves and is loved in return, you hate everyone, and are feared and despised. You are a pathetic child and you must be punished, you cannot be allowed to continue on your foolish crusade." and with that the Trill whipped out the daggers and sent them hurtling toward the High-Maje!

But Kes still had a shred of sanity, albeit very small, and she reached out at nearly the last moment and caught the twirling blades with her mind. They froze inches in front of her chest and with massive willpower she reversed them, sending them back at Ezri.

But they fell far short of their mark and clanged to the deck, useless. Ezri smiled back at her, "I thought as much, you are drained, you've reached the end of your abilities. Good. Lets finish this fairly."

Kes stared at her and slowly nodded. She howled and charged the Trill. Behind Ezri, the forgotten Pendari rose from his supposed unconscious heap and leaped at the Kazon who were so enraptured with the feuding females they had forgotten to keep an eye on the Champion.

Nobody on the Command Deck noticed on the viewscreen, as the _Equinox_'s engines and hull suddenly lit up.

**To be continued...**


	15. Chapter XV

**Chapter XV - Toward the Dying Sun**

_Just out from the red dwarf of Bolaris Minor..._

"Shields up, charge all phaser banks, load torpedo tubes!" shouted Captain Rudulf Ransom, from his seat in the Command chair of the _RSS Equinox_.

"Aye sir, weapons ready." acknowledged the new Helmsman.

"Shields at eighty-seven percent!" reported the excited girl manning the Tactical Station for the first time.

Rudy sent a silent thank-you to Marla, "Pick two Kazon vessels, any but the _Fury_, save her for last, and fire!"

"Firing!" advised the man at the Helm.

The _Equinox_ spun in space and let loose with everything. Full phasers lanced forward,and tore into the closest Kazon Juggernaut. Photon torpedoes shot out of the dorsal section of the Constitution+Class ship and rocketed through space to slam into the under-hull of another.

Neither ships had shields up, so confident were their Kazon commanders. They were six, the Terrans were one, why waist the power? Why indeed...

Jagged rips were torn into the first ship, breaching deck-after-deck, gutting the vessel like a tin can. It exploded into fiery shards and fell into the dwarf sun.

The second ship took seven fiery blue torpedoes before they managed to get they're shields up, and all it managed to do was implode within it's own protective cocoon. The _Equinox_ shot forward and flew through the now expanding debris cloud. Three of the remaining Kazon cruisers raised shields and powered beam weapons. They turned and rocketed after the Terran vessel.

"Take us around the star, go to Full Impulse. Evasive maneuvers." ordered Ransom and the new Helmsman looked back over his shoulder at him, fear on his face.

"I-uh-never...I mean Noah showed me the basics down in the Simulator, but I've never tried-" he began, but Ransom smiled.

"Victor Markhov, right?" he asked, the man nodded nervously.

"Victor, you know the controls, right?" and Victor nodded, but the ship shook from a Kazon hit, he started to turn back to the Helm, but Rudy shook his head, stopping him.

"Don't worry about that, our shields can take it for a moment." he said, "Victor, just take a deep breath. Now, if Noah chose to teach you the Helm, then he knew you can handle it. I watched you when you got here, you can do it. Okay?"

Victor nodded, his breathing calmer now, then he smiled and turned back to the Helm. He took the controls and his hands darted slowly across them, then picked up speed. The Impulse engines started to hum louder and the thrusters began to fire quickly and rapidly.

"Want to comfort me too?" quipped the teenage girl from the shield controls, Ransom smiled and leaned forward in his command chair.

The _Equinox_ twisted toward the red sun and dived under a rising solar flare. The three Kazon vessels followed, lined up now, in tandem, firing with their disruptors. The bright orange beams were plentiful, but few touched the shields of the white starship.

The complex maneuvers she was undertaking, coupled with the interfering radiation from the sun, made targeting very difficult. Then the _Equinox_ came to a lurching stop and the Kazon rocketed past her, one gold vessel actually brushing shields with her. The impact caused Ransom's ship to tilt to the side and it's phasers went wild, all missing their targets.

The Kazon rumbled to a stop, spun around, then together shot back toward the now stabilized _Equinox_. They opened fire and the Terran ship stood her ground, no time to dodge.

The Bridge rocked from the direct hits and Ransom gripped his chair to stay in his seat.

"Shields at sixty-nine percent." said the girl and Ransom demanded to know which of the Kazon's shields were weakest, "The port one is at 94 percent.", she reported."

"Great. Just great." said Rudy, then gave the order to fire photons again, a full spread on that ship.

Torpedoes shot out and slammed into the port Kazon, splattering onto her shields, which absorbed them all. All that they accomplished was to stop that one from firing upon them for a moment.

"Their shields have dropped to 21 percent." she advised, but Ransom shook his head, then made a decision.

"Victor, into the asteroid belt, Full Impulse." he ordered.

"What?" gasped the helmsman.

"Victor!" shouted Ransom, "Now!"

The _Equinox_ nosed down and dived under the approaching Kazon, arched away from the sun, then accelerated to full impulse. The asteroids rocketed toward them, they would be there in moments. Ransom studied his personal Tactical display.

"Prepare to change course at my mark to 0-2-4, mark 35." he ordered, "...and mark!"

"Aye, aye." came the mostly composed voice of Victor.

The _Equinox_ shot to the right and upwards, plunging into the thick of the field, the Juggernauts right on their tail. As Ransom gave directions, Victor took the_ Equinox_ through a twisting perilous course. They weaved in-and-out of the rocks, over-and-under.

A large one loomed before them, no time to dodge, "Target with phasers and fire." ordered the Captain and the ship blasted it to rubble.

They dived to port and Ransom caught sight of his goal, "There! That asteroid at bearing 3-0-1, mark 5, take us inside." he ordered.

To his credit, Victor said nothing this time and they shot into an opening three times their size. The _Equinox_ flew down the passage which was rapidly growing smaller.

"How did you know this was here, sir?" asked the Shield Officer.

"I was a part of a mining survey team that examined this field two years ago. I remembered this particular meteorite, noting it's possibilities for future battle consideration." stated Rudy, eyes locked on the viewscreen.

She stared at the back of her Captain's head in disbelief, "You formed a battle strategy for this rock two _years_ ago?" and Ransom nodded.

"I like to think ahead." he said plainly, "You never know where you might have to hide."

"Wow, and you did the math in your head just now to be sure the Equinox could fit all the way through, incredible!" she remarked.

"Uh...well..." said Ransom slowly.

"Captain?" asked the girl.

"CAPTAIN!" screamed Victor and directly ahead they saw the opening back into space.

But it was obviously too small.

"Oh, hell! Fire forward torpedoes!" shouted Ransom and Victor did so, closing his eyes.

From the point of view of the far side of the massive meteorite, the side exploded outward with a blast of detonating photon torpedoes! Chunks of rock the size of houses and apartment buildings blew away, and the _Equinox_ emerged at high speed. A protruding spur of rock loomed and tore into the top of the saucer section, tearing a jagged cut through two decks, from the front, all the way to the back.

The ship was spun on it's axis, 180 degrees, and it came to a stop, facing the asteroid it had just emerged from.

The entire hull was blackened and pitted from the nearly point-blank torpedo blasts, and the massive tear burned with escaping atmosphere, while debris floated up to vaporize against the inside of their own shields.

On the Bridge, a bruised and bleeding Ransom got to his feet, stumbled to the helm. On the sparking viewscreen the widened tunnel loomed and he could see the lights of the Kazon ships nearly to the exit. He pushed the stunned Victor out of the seat and sat down. He entered the complex fire pattern he had been mentally working on while in the tunnel.

"This better work." he said to the knocked out Engineer.

The Shield Officer stood up on wobbly legs from the upper deck and raised a salute to him, "You the man!" she managed to say and then she fainted to the floor.

Ransom grinned and hit the fire control.

Aimed torpedoes streaked out and targeted phasers lanced forward. They struck the asteroid at exact points and continued doing so for nearly five seconds, then stopped. For a moment nothing happened and Ransom stared, thinking nothing, only radiated faith, in his own abilities, his own self training. Faith in the ship he called his own.

Then, as the first Kazon vessel started to emerge, the asteroid shuddered, then collapsed. It was like a black hole had opened in it's center, it imploded and fell into itself. The Kazon were caught inside and crushed to nothing within moments.

Anti-matter explosions echoed through the rock, which was now a third it's original size.

Rudy jumped to his feet, shouting, "Yes! I got them, I got all three of them! I-" then he froze, as over the top of the collapsed asteroid appeared an untouched Kazon Juggernaut, gleaming and intact.

Finally, a Kazon Commander had actually learned to suspect a trap. The vessel saw the _Equinox_ and opened fire.

******\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\**

On the Command deck of the _KOS Fury_, a battle of a different kind was being waged. As the Pendari knocked heads and body-slammed the entire Kazon Command crew, Ezri Tigan stood her ground, arms at the ready, as the maddened Ocampa shot across the deck toward her.

Ezri had dealt with mentally unbalanced opponents before and knew to remember that they can be unpredictable. As Kes lunged for her, she suddenly moved, angled to the right, and the Ocampa's grasping fingers missed her. She pivoted, grabbed Kes by her hair and uniform back, and flipped her to the floor.

Kes may have been consumed by psychotic rage, but she had been trained in combat by the best the Kazon Sects had to offer. She slapped the deck, used her momentum to twist onto her side, and kicked the Trill's legs out from under her.

Ezri tumbled to the deck and Kes leaped atop her, screaming, tearing, clawing at her torso and face! It was like being attacked by a rabid animal, and for a moment Ezri panicked, she had to resist to the instinct to respond in kind. With one arm up to keep the woman from clawing her eyes, she used the other to grab Kes's shoulder.

With a grunt she tore the mad woman off her and slammed the Ocampa down onto her back, beside her. Ezri jumped to a crouch and rammed an elbow into Kes's chest, then smashed her across the face as hard as she could!

Kes's head whipped sideways and teeth were torn loose, scattering onto the floor. She spit blood, then instinctively kicked up with her knee, which knocked Ezri to her side. Kes rolled sideways and up to a standing position. She looked around just in time to see the Trill running toward her, cartwheel sideways, and launch herself in a vertical kick. Kes dodged, grabbed the girl's legs, and spun her around 180 degrees. Ezri crashed into her throne and Kes leaped onto her.

Before Ezri could recover, Kes grabbed her hair and smacked her face into the hard golden surface, splitting her forehead. She yanked her head back and struck her across the face, tearing quadruple slashes with her jagged finger nails.

"Imperial slut!", Kes spit into Ezri's stunned face venomously, "We could have ruled together, but no! You had to betray me for your Terran taskmaster. I can see him in your mind right now, don't worry, once I finish beating you to death, I will personally cut out his diseased Terran heart and serve it to my crew. He will die screaming for you!"

She swung her head to slam against the chair again, but Ezri struck out faster and planted a hand to brace herself. She gritted her teeth and slammed her booted foot down on Kes's and felt bones crack beneath her heal. Kes screamed in pain releasing her hair, so Ezri followed her attack up with a knee to the groin.

As the High-Maje doubled over, Ezri grasped the armrest of the command-throne and yanked it around. The high metal backrest hit Kes in the shoulder and sent her reeling to the railing that looked out over the lower deck. But Kes managed to catch herself and swung around to meet the Trill who leapt at her.

There was a furious interchange of blows, kicks, and fast blocks. Ezri's martial arts training fought against Kes's, and the two alien forms seemed equally matched. Both women were tiring, this could not last for much longer.

The Pendari also was finally reaching the end of his energy reserves, there were just too many of the Kazon troopers, and they had knives, the evidence of which was plain on the various slashes on his arms and upper-body. Four troopers lay either dead or unconscious on the deck, but five more now circled him.

They all had disruptors, but had not drawn them, and they knew that his being a Pendari, he did not normally use them. But knives were another matter, this was honorable combat, in their eyes. The largest of the group roared and darted forward, slashed brutally at the tired man.

The Pendari, breathing heavy now, stepped sideways, caught the Kazon's arm, and twisted. It broke with a loud crack, and the man howled, but he was abruptly cut off as the Pendari grabbed his throat and tore it out. As the alien dropped, the Pendari caught his breath for a second, _I've got to end this now, that's the last time they're gonna attack me solo_, he thought, and looked around for inspiration.

He glanced up and saw a protruding beam, looked back at the Kazon and his lips curled into an arrogant smile, "You boys are soft, must be that woman who tells you what to do, she makes you weak, docile." he jeered.

Their eyes went wide and they all bared their teeth. They rushed forward together, so he dropped to a crouch then launched himself upwards and caught the beam. The Kazon crashed into each other, as he braced his feet against the ceiling and pulled with all his strength.

The ceiling groaned, metal screamed, and the beam tore loose, taking with it a chunk of the paneling! The big man used the sudden momentum to launch himself out of the way and he hit the floor rolling, as the debris avalanched down onto the three Kazon, crushing them to the floor. The turbolift was blocked, sealing all on the Command Deck in.

The two combating women shot shocked looks in the direction of the carnage, both pausing for the moment in mid-fight. The Pendari got to his feet and brushed dust from his trousers, then turned to regard them, "Don't let me interrupt." he said folding his arms, and he leaned back on the railing to watch.

Kes regained her composure first, leaned back and kicked out with her boot, catching Ezri in the chest. The Trill tumbled back against the railing as Kes turned the kick into a side flip and thrust her fists toward Ezri's head as she landed. Ezri was ready, she twisted and grabbed both wrists, then slammed the Maje into the bar, "You are a fool! You came to my part of the galaxy on a fool's errand, and look what it cost you!" Ezri shouted, then brought both fists down on Kes's back.

She thrust a knee upwards knocking the Ocamapa back, then sent her flying with a back hand, "I didn't betray you, I was never on your side. Besides, I don't like to associate with..." she snagged Kes's blond hair again and hauled her battered and bleeding face up to hers, "...cold-blooded psychotic murderers!"

She then hoisted her and threw her across the room, to land with a crash on the hard deck. The Ocampa lay there unmoving, and Ezri straightened her armor, and strode over to the Pendari, who smiled down at her, "Nice goin, Spots." he said, and she glared.

"Fine help you were." she said.

He chuckled, "I knew you could take her, and besides, it was none of my business. By the way, you promised to get me off this ship, but I'm still here."

She turned to a nearby console and brought it online, "Give me sec to locate my ship. I'll have them beam us back, and-" she caught herself, and blinked a quick pattern to bring up the time display on her contacts, "Crap! That timer we rigged on the Nacene device is going to go off in less then twelve minutes, we've got to go!"

She activated the ship's sensors, she had absorbed enough Kazon text and syntax during her trip through the bowels of the ship to do that, and scanned for the _Equinox_, "There! She's in the asteroid belt, we'll go to them."

She turned to head for the Helm when a knife thudded into her chest, burying itself deep. She looked up with wide eyes to see a bloody and grinning Kes standing on unsure legs, grasping another knife. Both were the ones Ezri had thrown at her earlier.

As Ezri fell to her knees, gasping and spitting up blood, the Pendari shot forward. He tore across the deck, but the High-Maje calmly reached behind a console beside her, pulled out a pistol, and blasted him off his feet. He tumbled backwards and landed on his side on the deck. Kes adjusted the weapon, shifting it to maximum power and pointed it at him, as he struggled against the heavy stun to get up. She smiled a cruel smile and started to squeeze the trigger.

"KES!" shouted Ezri, and the crazied Ocampa looked up at her, to see the Trill holding a tiny black device in her raised hand.

"How-" gasped Kes, but Ezri grunted and yanked the bloody blade out, tossing it across the deck.

"We Trills don't keep our hearts in the same place as you Ocampa or Kazon. Oh, yeah, and you should have thrown both knives." and with that she depressed a tab on her detonator.

The microcharges hidden on the hilts of both daggers exploded. The one Ezri had tossed blew up the Environmental Console. The one Kes clasped in her left hand tore off her leg and vaporized her arm up to the elbow. She was thrown into the wall and dropped to the deck, unmoving.

Ezri took a step toward the Pendari, grunted then collapsed. Blood pooled on the deck beneath her...

**To be continued...**


	16. Chapter XVI

**Chapter XVI - Paradise Found Again  
**

_On the Bridge of the _Equinox_..._

Captain Ransom stood over the Helm console, smoke and steam rising around him, and regarded the untouched Kazon vessel as it approached firing range. He glanced down at his status readings, _great, shields at eight percent, no photons, and, only one active phaser bank,_ he observed. The hull breach had overloaded most of the ship's systems. The thruster panel was still lit, at least Rudy had that.

"Yay..." he muttered under his breath.

The _Equinox_ was dead in space, again. And her meager weapons were no match for another ship with full shields. The Juggernaut reached them and opened fire. The ship shook and the shield meter began to drop.

"Ransom to Engineering." he called.

Gilmore answered, a note of panic in here voice, "_Rudy! Thank god, what the hell are you doing up there, we're in bad shape, the warp core is offline, and_-" there came an explosion, as the shields fell and a beam slammed into the Secondary hull.

Another couple of blasts tore into the port warp nacelle, gutting it, and then the next shot tore into the pylon. The Kazon were going to carve them up, piece-by-piece. Then Ransom had an idea, "Marla, can you transfer most of our antimatter to the port nacelle?"

"Are you crazy, the Kazon are eating into it, you'll cause a massive explosion when it's breached!" she said.

"I'm counting on it, do it! Then transfer every last shred of power, even life-support, into the shields, get them back up." and he shut the link.

He brought up an Engineering link on the console and accessed the hull locks. He entered his access codes, then glanced at the display, and saw Marla had done as he asked. Just before the Kazon's beam finished severing the pylon he slapped the control and the explosive charges at the top blew the nacelle off to tumble away into space.

Ransom fired one of his remaining phasers at a piece of asteroid debris he had been eyeing, it detonated, and the blast wave sent the nacelle tumbling toward the Kazon ship. He locked phasers on it and fired thrusters, sending the Equinox shooting to starboard.

He watched as the enemy vessel turned to bare on them, then as the nacelle got as close as it was going to get he turned on the shields and fired. The red beam ripped into the tube, burned through, and it burst apart. Then as the anti-matter ignited, the small explosion erupted into a massive inferno!

It caught the Kazon ship under it's forward hull and tore through the hull like it was paper. The shields weren't even up, so overly confident were the aliens. The bottom half of the ship was ripped off, then the rest ignited, a hundred plasma fires crawled across the jagged surface.

As the battered _Equinox_ was tossed away by the shockwaves, the golden juggernaut disappeared in a final, brutal detonation. Plasma fire and debris washed across the ship, and Ransom fought to keep the shields up, but they finally failed and the deck shook from multiple impacts.

Then it was over.

He stood and looked around.

They had survived, "YES!" yelled Ransom, breaking his normally reserved demeanor, but no one on the Bridge was awake to see it.

Then the sensors bleeped and he moved up to the Science Station. A quick glance at the sensor readout told him another Kazon vessel, the _Fury_ no less, was closing on them. He sighed, _damn, need another brilliant idea, I guess_...

Ransom turned to head for the Helm again, when a indicator light flashed on the Communications panel. His eyes narrowed, but he still reached over and activated the viewscreen link. He turned in time to see the image shift to the Command Deck of the _Fury_, but it wasn't a gloating High-Maje Kes he was expecting. To his surprise, dominating the screen was a massive dark-haired humanoid with vertical ridges stretching down from his forehead to his nose.

"Who are-" he started to ask, but the alien interrupted.

"_No time, pal! You know a girl with lotsa spots, death on all fours?_" the man asked.

"Ezri? What are you talking about, where are the Kazon?" demanded Ransom.

"_I said there is no time, what you deaf?_" roared the humanoid, "_This ship's Shift Drive is gonna activate in like four minutes, so you've to beam us off here!_"

"Us? What do you mean, us?" the Captain asked, and the big alien reached down and lifted in his arms the most gorgeous, the most beautiful sight Rudy had ever seen: a bloody Ezri Tigan, unconscious but breathing.

"_And she isn't doing to good, so's if I were you I'd be ready with a Medic or something, I think she has a punctured lung._" informed the Pendari.

"Stay where you are, DO NOT MOVE!" shouted Ransom and he slapped his combadge, "Ransom to Sickbay! Dammit, answer me, Doctor, NOW!"

The EMH2 finally did so, sounding annoyed, "_Sickbay here. Why are you yelling, I can hear you just f_-"

"Not now, get to Transporter Room 2, ASAP, bring a trauma kit, go! We have a Trill casualty incoming." ordered Ransom and the Hologram acknowledged, then Ransom called Gilmore.

"_Rudy? What? I've got problems_-" she started to say, but Ransom had no time at all.

"I need power for Transporter Room 2, and I need it now!" he ordered.

"_No way, we have barely enough battery power down here to run the Environmental System_." he heard her negative tone, "_Even if we had enough power for a single transport, which we don't, we could never spare it. Sorry, it's impossible._"

Ransom hung his head, _no, it's not fair_, he thought, _a miracle happens, I have a chance to get her back, and it's snatched away again._ His badge chirped and the doctor sounded in, "_I've reached the transporter, how come no one is here? And the console is dead, I cannot get anything from it._"

"Please...stand by, Doctor." Rudy said very quietly, then raised his head to look at the static-strewn viewscreen.

The big humanoid stood on the Command Deck of the _Fury_, holding Ezri in his arms. He stared back at Rudy, a look of resolve on his face. He glanced at his time display, "_We've got less then a minute. Your ship have a shuttle?_" he asked.

"Yes, but it could never reach you in time, and it would take an Engineering Team at least ten minutes to integrate it with our power systems. And it doesn't have a transporter." replied Ransom.

"_Well, we set that Nacene device to take this ship back to the Delta Quadrant. After that it will self-destruct, so there's no coming back. And it's the only device of it's kind._" replied the man, then to Rudy's amazement and joy Ezri sat slowly up in his arms and looked foggily toward the viewscreen.

"_R-Rudy...is that you?_" she asked with a rasping voice and coughed up some blood.

Rudy hopped the rail and ran to the screen, "Yes, it's me! Are you going to be okay?" he asked, longing in his voice.

"_Don't think s-so..._" she trailed off, then she looked around and frowned, "_Why are we still here? Can't you_-" she coughed into her palm, "_ugh, beam us off?_"

Ransom closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again, "I'm sorry, but we're too badly damaged, no power even for one beam out."

"_Oh._" she replied, "_Well, guess I'm gonna get to see the Delta Quadrant. For maybe five, ten m-minutes. Beat that, explorer!_" and she smiled at him.

"Ezri, I...I..." he stumbled over the words, but she got it, and nodded back.

"_I know Rudy, I know. Take care of the crew, they n-need you now._" she said, then she consulted her countdown, "_We're about to go. Rudy I love you so much, I..._" then her head slumped back, and she stopped breathing.

"EZRI! No...I love...I-no..." Rudy slammed his fists against the screen, cracking it.

There was a burst of static and the image vanished to be replaced by a view of space, as a displacement wave shot away, taking the _Fury_, and the only woman Rudolf Ransom had ever, truly loved with all his heart, with it.

He slumped to his knees, his hands sliding off the screen and to his sides.

He was alone.

Nothing disturbed the stillness of the darkened Bridge for what seemed like an eternity...

...then...

...then the voice of the holographic Doctor sounded in the room, "_EMH2 to the Captain. I got them. We're taking Tigan to Sickbay, she needs surgery. Doctor out._"

"How?" demanded the amazed Chief Engineer, grasping the Hologram's shoulders, nearly shaking him off his feet, "How did you transport them back? There was no power, it was impossible."

It was three hours later, and the EMH2 had just finished checking the wounded, only two people remained for observation. Ezri had been out of surgery for more then an hour now. Marla Gilmore released the tow-headed Photonic, allowing him to continue his explanation.

He smiled, obviously pleased with himself, "Oh, I used the Tantalus field. As I tried to tell the Captain before, it has several useful functions, it's much more than a weird Holographic projection system. It also has a lethal offensive ability, which I of course disabled. And-"

"Get to the point!" the up and around Noah Lessing nearly shouted.

The Hologram sniffed, "Okay, okay. It also has a limited range transporter system, at least that's what I thought it was. I was able to snatch the two of them off the _Fury_ just as the displacement wave hit. It was very close."

"Thanks again, buddy." and the Pendari slapped him hard across the back.

The EMH2 glared up at him, "Stop doing that." The tall man laughed heartily.

"And Ezri will be okay?" asked Gill Adams and the Hologram nodded.

"It was close, but she'll pull through. I'll need to monitor her here for a couple of days, but then she'll be free to return to duty." replied the Doctor.

Marla stepped to the window and gazed into the dim intensive care ward. The Captain stood over the petite woman on the biobed, holding her hand.

With his other hand Rudy brushed a lock of hair from her forehead and ran his finger lightly across her scar. He could not remember ever being happier. At his gentle touch she moaned softly and whispered, "...mm, Rudy..." She opened her eyes, slowly looking up at him.

"Hello." he said, and grinned.

She smiled back, "I knew you would find away." she said softly.

"Sorry, can't take all the credit, it was the Doctor. The Captain can't be the hero every time, even in the end." he replied.

"See? I told you the EMH2 was a good idea, and you were so mean. I demand an...an apology..." and she drifted back to sleep.

He smiled down at her, "You have it. Sweet dreams."

"I would like to propose a toast." said Adam Gill, raising his glass.

The entire crew, minus a skeleton team on the Bridge who were watching via the viewscreen, raised their own champagne flutes.

"To Captain Ransom, the best damn Captain in the Olympian Star Squadron!" and there was a loud cheer.

"There's only five captains in our fleet." replied Ransom and everyone laughed.

It was two days later, and the Equinox was at last on her way back to Olympia Prime, albeit at Warp 2, which was pretty good for what power they had, and the one nacelle. But at least it would only take two weeks to get home, instead of several months at impulse. The hull breaches were sealed and the crew healthy.

Ransom was happy with that. They had only lost two people, Ransom had been sure it would have been more. They had been very lucky. And so was the Alpha Quadrant. If that Kazon armada had gotten loose in the Olympian Star System-but he couldn't dwell on that. The funeral for Carson and Brant had been a somber affair earlier in the day.

Now it was time for a celebratory party, and that reminded the Captain. He rose and raised his glass, "To our new permanent Chief Medical Officer, with the full rank of Lieutenant, congratulations. We all owe you much, and myself most of all."

The Hologram, resplendent in his new black leather _Equinox_ uniform, raised his photonic glass and nodded back. Noah slapped his back in congratulations, spilling the drink, "Why does everyone keep doing that?" the EMH2 asked, but not angrily.

As the party continued, Ezri Tigan stepped up beside the Pendari, who stood away from the festivities, gazing out the window of the mess hall, into the chaos of warp space. She gazed out with him, "Wishing you were back in the Delta Quadrant? You could have told them to just transport me, and then gone back with the _Fury_."

He took a swig from the large tankard of ale he had replicated, "Yeah, and find myself facing down an entire civilization of angry Kazon, wanting to know what happened to their fleet."

"You could have taken them. With both hands tied behind your back." she replied and he chuckled, "Well...maybe with one hand free." she dead-panned.

He looked down at her and raised the customary one eyebrow.

Ezri laughed, then asked, "By the way, what is your name? You must have one. It can't just be: The Pendari! Everyone run!"

"My family designation is i'Ronii. Roth is my first name." he replied.

Gill Adams stepped up beside them, "That's your name? Roth i'Ronii?" he laughed har, and had to hold himself up with a hand against the window, "Hah! Roth i'Ronii! Hee-hee!"

Roth gripped him by the front of his jacket and hefted him into the air with one hand, "Explain how that's funny." he growled.

"I'll leave you two to get better aquainted." Ezri said and she threaded her way through the crowd, and found Rudy talking to a teenage girl.

He smiled, "Ezri, meet our new Science Officer, Ensign Miranda Cortez. She was our temporary Shield Officer during the battle with the Kazon."

The girl smiled meekly and nodded.

"Congratulations. You have small shoes to fill." replied the Trill, thinking of Seska down in the Brig. The spy's Cardassian features had receded, the nanite injection she had taken only temporary, now she looked human again.

Ransom's features hardened, he knew what Tigan meant "She'll stand trial on Olympia, when we get back. Ezri can I speak to you in private?" he asked, and they left the party and went to the turblolift.

As soon as the doors closed he grabbed her in a tight embrace and they kissed, long and passionately. When she finally broke from him, Ezri looked up at Rudy and ran her fingers through his wavy hair, "You didn't tell the turbolift which floor."

"Well, your quarters or mine?" he asked and she smiled.

"I've been meaning to talk to you about that. Mine are so small and lonely. As the Captain you get the biggest quarters on the ship. I demand a promotion, to like Admiral or the like, so I can kick your ass out and take'em." she said.

"Well, I have a better solution." Rudy said slowly, "How about we share them?" and he stared down at her, awaiting her answer.

"Okay." she said brightly, "But whatever will the crew think?"

He pulled her up in to his arms and ordered the lift to the Officer's deck, "Let them think what they want. If they don't like it, there's always the Agony Booth."

And the starship _Equinox_ sailed off into space, bound for home...

**The End...**


End file.
